Technical Submission Maintenance

contributed by Erin Hoffman

Just starting a page with some freeform ideas on how web technology can provide tools for online magazines to handle submissions. Some magazines are using these automated processes already -- Strange Horizons has a submission form; Deep Magic, when it was running, had a very sophisticated CMS (content management system) handling all of their subs, editor replies, status updates, etc. But there is still unexplored potential here.

A solid content submission system with existing web technology should be able to, in order of complexity:

• give an automated response to submission receipt (very basic, many magazines already do this);
• in the auto-response:
• tell the contributor how many unread stories are currently in the queue;
• give the author the current status of their story (initially would be "unread"; other categories could include "first read", "hold for senior editor");
• based on the # of unread stories currently in the queue, give an estimate of response time;
• close the submission system if there are too many stories in the queue (auto-shutdown of subs) with a response stating why subs are closed;
• allow the author to sign up to be notified when subs re-open;
• give the author a confirmation number such that they could send a message to the mailman system along the lines of 'CHECK STATUS <conf #> and receive a status update on all the above information (story status, place in queue, estimated response time)

All of this would be exceedingly easy given current technology -- it is very simple database management -- and would peel back the veil of mystery surrounding the submission process. For some magazines that LIKE to operate under this level of mystery (authors not knowing what their competition is like) it could be undesirable, but I would argue that this level of transparency generates trust with one's contributors and also seamlessly and effortlessly communicates basic information about the magazine's status. All too often online magazines have fluctuating response times or even become 'black holes'; right now we are using the basics of internet technology (email submissions) without working to abrogate their flaws (submission loss, which is very frequent). Automated confirmation is a basic that I strongly believe no professional magazine should go without. And by "professional" I'm talking about a basic level of respect and business -- meaning anyone who is taking money for stories, not just those that are SFWA-pro qualified. The additional features add levels of technology that would at least be helpful for magazine maintenance internally, but also contain marketing value in terms of level of expressed professionalism for one's contributors.

It is my plan to create this back end system -- probably in php and SQL -- and offer it for free as an open source model for magazines to use, as I believe it would improve the operating conditions for all online magazines.

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