The Open Notebook Early-Career Fellowship Program
The Open Notebook offers a paid, part-time fellowship program for early-career science journalists. During the course of this fellowship, fellows work with a mentor to plan, report, and write articles for publication at The Open Notebook and become part of the TON editorial team. This one-year program offers fellows the opportunity to explore their career interests and passions and to sharpen their skills as part of a talented, supportive, diverse community of past and present fellows and mentors. This fellowship is made possible through the generous support of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, which has supported this program since 2013.
More Details
Length: 12 months (part time)
Start Date: February 23, 2026
Location: Remote
Stipend: $6,600
Deadline: October 31, 2025
The Fellowship Experience
During this remote, part-time fellowship, each fellow will pitch, report, and write articles for publication at The Open Notebook—a mix of “story behind the story” interviews and reported features. They will have weekly phone or video meetings with a mentor who is an experienced science journalist and who will help them shape story ideas, provide reporting and writing guidance, edit fellows’ article drafts, and offer general craft and career-development advice and guidance.
Fellows and mentors also take part in a Slack discussion group composed of other current and former fellowship participants and TON editors. During the fellowship, fellows will participate in cohort-based activities in the fellowship Slack community. Membership in this community will continue after the fellowship ends.
Eligibility
- The fellowship is open to early-career science journalists.
- If you live outside the U.S., you are welcome to apply.
- Some training and/or experience in writing for the general public is a requirement for this fellowship.
- You do not need to have extensive experience or training, but you do need to have some.
- Science journalists (or aspiring science journalists) must have fewer than three years of regular professional science writing experience.
- Internships and student work do not count toward the fewer-than-three-years requirement.
- Exceptions to this requirement may also be made for cases in which an applicant has more than three years of professional science writing experience but some or all of that experience is not in English.
- Applications, including writing samples and letters of recommendation, must be in English.
- Materials translated into English from another language are acceptable.