Submission Guidelines

We collect work from young people everywhere for consideration for our BirdSleuth Investigator magazine. The online submission form makes it easy for you to quickly submit science reports, artwork, photos, and graphs! Submissions are due by June 30, 2020.

Send us your work! We want to learn about the research that students around the country are doing.

Submit Student Work

Scientific Reports

  • Send us your report in a Word document or Google Doc.
  • You are welcome to send a digital photograph or graph to illustrate your report. It’s easiest to send them embedded into your report, but you can send them separately—see guidelines below.
  • Curious how we evaluate reports for publication? Click here for the rubric we use.

Graphs

  • Send graphs as an Excel file. Scanning and sending a hand-written graph is fine, too. In either case, please include the data used to create the graph (your Excel data table if using Excel).
  • Every graph needs to include:
    • Title
    • Descriptive labels for both x- and y-axes
    • Legend
    • Temporal context (when you observed the birds—for example, “bird counts conducted March 1- April 15, 2019”)

Art and Photos

We accept original art but prefer that you send us your work as a JPEG or TIFF file. In order to reproduce your art so it looks fantastic, we need files that are high resolution and in color.

If you would like to submit a photo digitally, please be sure that your photo is high resolution—300 DPI when sized to about 3 inches wide. Usually, if you set your camera to the highest or best quality setting, this will produce a fine image. Lower resolution photographs may look sharp on your computer screen but will not work in the online or print magazine. Please save the photo as a TIFF or JPEG file.

Use these settings for photographs or art created with pencil, crayons, paint, colored marker, or multimedia:

  • RGB
  • 100% original size
  • 300 dpi
  • Save as highest-resolution JPEG

Use these settings for art created with pen, ink, black marker, or pen:

  • BITMAP
  • 100% original size
  • 1200 dpi
  • Save as a TIFF file

Ready to send in your work? Click below to use our online form! Please read and understand our Terms of Use (below) before you submit your work.

Submit Student Work

If you have any questions about submitting work to us, please call (607) 254-2489 or email K12Lab@cornell.edu.
Note: Online submissions are our preferred method of receiving your students’ work. However, to submit student work in paper form, simply mail your packet to:

K-12 Education
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
159 Sapsucker Woods Rd.
Ithaca, NY 14850

Terms of Use, Photos and Images Submitted
License and Indemnification

I hereby grant to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (“CLO”) a royalty-free, perpetual license to use the images submitted herewith (the “Work”) for any purpose whatsoever. Uses may include, but are not limited to, promotion of CLO and their projects (including BirdSleuth) in any way, including on the web, in print publications, as distributed to the media, and in commercial products. CLO reserves the right to use/not use any Work as deemed appropriate by CLO in their sole discretion. No Work will be returned once submitted.

I understand that by submitting this online form, I hereby acknowledge that CLO shall bear no responsibility whatsoever for protecting my work against third party infringement of my copyright interest or other intellectual property rights or other rights I may hold in such Work, and in no way shall be responsible for any losses I may suffer as a result of any such infringement; and I hereby represent and warrant that my Work does not infringe the rights of any other individual or entity.

In exchange for valuable consideration, I do hereby unconditionally release, hold harmless and indemnify CLO, their directors, officers, members, employees and volunteers of and from all claims, liabilities and losses arising out of or in connection with my participation or CLO’s use of my Work. This release and indemnification shall be binding upon me, and my heirs, executors, administrators and assigns.