Hello,
I think there are different degrees of obligation in this case. It would certainly be good for a magazine to give a reply in a timely fashion--this would be more than just polite, but would allow authors to look for other publishing venues while before a submission goes stale. Many do not reply in the negative because they don't have the time, which can create lots of difficulties for authors.
Look first to a publication's submission policies to see what they say they will do. When you submit an article, you might put a note on it to the effect that, if you have not heard from them in XX amount of time you will assume they are not interested and look elsewhere. To be extra sure, you might email the editor when that time has elapsed and say "I haven't heard from you. Are you interested in the article? If so, please let me know right away. Otherwise I will withdraw the piece and submit elsewhere."
I think the key is knowing or establishing clear ground rules. Not all of these rules are issues of law (I suspect most are not) but rather industry conventions. If the rules at a particular publication aren't clear to you, it's best to ask.
Good luck,
Frederick Emrich
> Hi,
> Thanks for your reply. Yeah, I recently got to know about that
'simultaneous
> submissions' rule. However, I was wondering, and you would know since you
are an
> editor, is a magazine that receives an article obligated to respond to the
> author, regardless of whether the piece is accepted or not? Because
otherwise, I
> might submit something to a certain institution, let's say regarding
current
> affairs, and if the mag does not get back to me, how would I know if I can
> submit to another place or not, seeing as I would be especially anxious
because
> my piece will get outdated soon enough? Thanks again.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Frederick Emrich, Editor, info-commons.org"
<editor[_at_]info-commons.org>
> To: "CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property"
<CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org>
> Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 10:35 PM
> Subject: [CNI-(C)] Re: Magazine owns my voluntarily contributed article?
>
>
> I don't know about the legal details here, but I do know that in the
> publishing world it is considered highly unethical to submit identical (or
> even similar) material to more than one publisher at the same time. In
part
> this is to avoid problems such as the one you are facing now, and in part
it
> is to minimize the possibility that publishers put effort into reviewing a
> submission only to have it "de-submitted" by an author who chooses to
> publish elsewhere.
>
> --Frederick Emrich
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <islam_for_life[_at_]hotmail.com>
> To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
> <CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org>
> Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 12:05 PM
> Subject: [CNI-(C)] Magazine owns my voluntarily contributed article?
>
>
> > Hello,
> > I was wondering if someone who knows the law could help me out here.
> >
> > Recently, I sent an article of mine to a couple of magazines, some based
> in the
> > US and others elsewhere. Now, I said in my letter that if any
institution
> was
> > interested in publishing my piece, I would like to know beforehand. Two
> > magazines (one in the US, one in the UK) responded, saying they were
> interested,
> > but at the same time, I came to know that another magazine (based in the
> US) had
> > already printed my article without informing me. Although I did not have
> any
> > problem with that, I was now confused as to whether I could let the
other
> two
> > magazines who had actually replied, print my piece or not. When I called
> those
> > who had printed my piece to ask regarding this, they said sure, we give
> > permission, but the other magazines must cite us as the source. I don't
> agree
> > with them, because, firstly, I requested to be informed before
publication
> of my
> > article which they didn't, and secondly, because I did not receive any
> monetary
> > compensation or anything of the sort from the magazine or even any
> contract that
> > would stipulate that by simply submitting my article to their email
> address I
> > give away my entire rights to my original work to them (not that my work
> is
> > really copyrighted by law), and thirdly, the other two magazines
received
> my
> > work directly from me. Am I right? Please let me know.
> >
> > Thank you very much in advance.
> > Sincerely,
> > SA
> >
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Received on Wed Jun 22 2005 - 02:10:01 GMT
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