Please adhere to the following guidelines when submitting an article for consideration in Joint Force Quarterly. Only these guidelines are correct. (Guidelines found on the Defense Technical Information Center [DTIC] Web site are outdated.)
Select a timely, relevant topic, but realize that doing so does not guarantee a timely, relevant paper. Do not conflate the importance of your topic with the importance of your writing about that topic.
An "A" paper written for a classroom environment and a published article are not necessary the same thing.
Remember the most important part of writing is to learn, not to teach. Students write essays in a classroom to learn; they do not truly understand an issue until they write about it. Writing causes students to think logically and coherently. Published articles should teach. A published article often begins as a student essay, but much work and revision goes into that paper before it is worthy of publication.
Answer the So what? question. Asking an individual to read 3,000 to 5,000 words is asking a lot. After that reader is finished, he must be edified by what he has read and prepared to operationalize it in some way.
Write in plain English. "Mil" speak, "Pentagonese," "security" speak, etc., are alienating to most readers and demonstrate not only pretention but also, in some cases, an inability to discuss an issue consistently, coherently, and knowingly. Writers who are on "the inside" of a topic must realize that most readers are not. Writing for an extremely limited audience (that is, all of the other "insiders") is not publishable. Overuse of jargon, acronyms, and initialisms demonstrates lack of creativity and careful thought.