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ASJ Process

  1. Mission / Topic / Material
  2. Write-up / Style
  3. Submission
  4. Review
  5. Publish
  6. Revision / Maintenance / Removal

Mission / Topic / Material

The mission of ArsDigita Systems Journal is to distribute knowledge acquired during the construction and operation of Web-based information systems. We expect the readership of ASJ to include both technical people and managers, thus, articles will not shy away from important technical details, on the theory that the nerds will find it useful and the managers will skim over it. On the other hand, the grungy tech details can be pushed into hyperlinks.

The topics are left to the discretion of the authors. Currently, topics range from reviews and papers on technologies that work with ArsDigita products to essays that cover or clarify the latest technological language, product or service.

The material that authors use ranges from simply recounting their own personal experience to broad references and citations, abstracting a bibliography of myriad other authors and articles.

Write-up / Style

ArsDigita uses cascading style sheets to define elements in its web pages. Please do not use FONT tags in your documents, as they will cause display problems with the style sheets. For special text effects, use only the HTML tags listed below:

<H1> </H1> Largest Heading
<H2> </H2> Medium Heading 1
<H3> </H3> Medium Heading 2
<H4> </H4> Smallest heading

  Preformatted text (you're reading it now), useful for displaying code examples or HTML tags on a web page
Heading tags should only be used for headlines. Subheads should be bold text with a <BR> between the subhead and the next paragraph, as you see below. 
All submitted pages should include the following adp header: 
      <asj_header author_email_list="{{Author1 Name}

      {author1@arsdigita.com}} {{Author2 Name} {author2@arsdigita.com}}"

      subtitle="Subtitle"  

      date_authored="YYYY-MM-DD"

      date_last_updated="YYYY-MM-DD"

      photo_src="myphoto.jpg"

      photo_href="http://photo_href" photo_size="height=200
      width=100"

      photo_alt="Photo alt text">

      The Title Of My Article

      </asj_header>

your article here -- just content HTML, no body tags 

<asj_footer></asj_footer>
In the asj_header tag everything but the author_email_list tag and the title (between <asj_header> and </asj_header>) is optional. Dates for date_authored and date_last_updated should be formatted YYYY-MM-DD. You need only supply one author name and e-mail address, although you may supply as many as you want. It may be appropriate to include a bio at the beginning or end of your article. If so, use the <asj_bio> registered tag. The format is as follows: 
<asj_bio

photo_src="myphoto.jpg"

photo_href="http://photo_href" 

photo_size="height=200 width=100"

photo_alt="Photo alt text">

Bio Text Here

</asj_bio>
The photo is optional, but if you include one, it should be thumbnail-sized so that text can wrap to the right and below it. If you include a photo be sure to include all four of the tags listed above. In general when writing a bio, stress your most recent and most interesting accomplishments first. Readers will care about things that qualify you to speak on the topic you're writing about; they are less likely to care where or when you were born.

ASJ Submission Style guidelines can also be found at: http://www.arsdigita.com/documents/style-guide/submission.adp, however, only employees can view that document at this time. What you need to know is essentially listed above.

Please refer to the chart below for mandatory and optional includes:

Mandatory:Optional:
AuthorSubtitle
Author's email addressAuthor bio
Date the article was originally submittedAuthor picture
Title of the article 

 

Submission

ASJ accepts articles from anyone anywhere in the world who has played a significant role in the construction or operation of a real Web service. To submit an article, please email your submission in MSWord or HTML format to asj-editors@arsdigita.com. You will have a response in less than 5 working days. You will receive a publishing decision in less than 10 working days.

Review

Each article is subject to review by a committee of ArsDigita employees. This committee is headed by Joe Lichtenberg, Richard Buck, and Hugh Brock. The review will consist of these employees evaluating each article for value, material, purpose and consistency.
  • Value: Does the article fit along with the mission of the ASJ? Is the topic covered relevant, purposeful and necessary? Is this topic valuable to our audience?
  • Material: Is the material up-to-date, concise and focused? Are all sources correctly cited and referenced? Are all supporting graphics, etc included and noted in the appropriate places?
  • Purpose: Is the articles thesis clearly defined? Does it have distinct sections, breaks, headers, etc.? Does the author define what this article is going to do or clarify and then proceed to do that?
  • Consistency: Is the article well written throughout? Is the article grammatically correct, using appropriate language, verb tenses, agreements, etc?

Publishing

Once each article is reviewed and approved, it will be published under the appropriate topic header at http://www.arsdigita.com/asj. The article will reside under CVS version control and will be updated by the ASJ editors when necessary.

Revisions / Maintenance / Removal

In the event that the author needs to make revisions or update an article, they should email asj-editors@arsdigita.com. Employees are encouraged to make minor corrections / additions on their own. This email address should also be used should they need to request the deletion of their article.

Note: This is a working document. Expect changes at anytime with or without notice.

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