Phase I: Choosing submissions and editorial assignments

Summary

Our first step is to review submissions and decide what to accept for the issue. This typically is done over two weekly Zoom meetings, the first to discuss general thoughts and ideas about the issue composition, and the second to finalize or significantly narrow down the selection. Proposals are accepted by a voting process, and discussion happens on the Google Group throughout the review and voting period. At this point, interested editors should fill out the editor survey and start thinking of which pieces you'd like to help edit.

Total time: 4 weeks, 3-4 meetings

Action items for editors: participate in meetings/offline discussion, vote on pitches, fill out the editor survey

What else you need to know

This process happens after the Call for Proposals has ended. We take all of our submissions and organize them by magazine department in a Google Spreadsheet. Members of the EC have one week to review and submit comments on all of the submissions. See the reviewing submissions page for more on how to think about this stage of the process.

At an initial EC meeting, we have an open discussion of what the submissions look like, how they relate to the theme, and more big-picture editorial questions. After this meeting, we typically emerge with a narrowed-down list of proposals and discuss these further over the following week via email. The second EC meeting narrows down the list further, after which members of the EC collectively vote to finalize which pitches to send provisional acceptances to. The ME will then send authors provisional acceptance emails to the selected proposals, and rejection/hold emails to the rest.

As an editor, at this point you should have filled out the Editor Survey and be starting to think about which pieces you'd like to help edit. When selecting pitches, keep in mind the principles of SftP magazine: a commitment to radical thought and to uplifting the voices of marginalized communities.