IS&T contributor Roberta Swetlow recently emailed in to ask about our submission guidelines. "Must all submissions to IS&T," she asked, "be previously unpublished material? Could I submit a piece that has been published in the past, to which I hold copyright? If the publication in which the work previously appeared has vanished from cyber or paper space, does that make a difference?"

So here is our answer, which hopefully clarifies the position...

We know a lot of other magazines, webzines and competition organizers get very up-tight and precious about all this 'previously unpublished' schlemozzle. We don't care. If something is good (and obviously if the author still retains copyright – please, never, ever sign away your copyright) we'll use it. All we take is a 'bare licence' to reproduce a poem or story. Besides, if a piece of writing is only ever used once (or, as Roberta Swetlow puts it – see below – is damned to obscurity) – whether online or offline – how is anyone ever going to hear about a new writer and their work?

The one caveat we do make is no simultaneous submission please (and that includes work also being submitted to competitions) if only because it causes us unnecessary aggro when, having accepted a piece, the author then gets it accepted elsewhere in one of those 'previously unpublished' outfits and wants to unsubmit it to us – or else even asks us to delete from the webzine a piece we have already published. Given that most readers receive an acceptance or rejection note within 24 hours, it is hardly a case of us unreasonably freezing their creative endeavours.

Not content with raising this pertinent question, Roberta went on to craft a haiku sequence that neatly sums up the plight of writers caught out this way...


Previous Publication


So many poems
Written when publication
Seemed a distant dream

Accepted – so proud!
Journal will showcase my work
Assumption turns trap

Submission guidelines:
Never known a published page
Virgin works only.

Other poems prisoned
In pages of journals
Now non-existent.

Words scream silently:
Previously published,
Damned to obscurity.