Submission management

The art and science of collecting and managing submissions (of any kind) is called Submission Management. Traditionally, submissions were collected offline i.e. in the form of 'hard' paper files or folders. However, with the recent penetration of Internet in almost every sphere of life, there has been a steady shift towards collecting electronic submissions as compared to hard copies of submissions. The Internet has also facilitated a change in the perception towards the deliverables or contents of a submission. As a result of this, submitting audio and video files, pictures and presentations in addition to standard text, word and pdf-like documents has become common in the last few years.

Managing submissions may include evaluating submissions and providing feedback to submitters, accepting or rejecting submissions or requesting submitters to make a re-submission. In some cases, a panel of experts may also be requested to assist in the evaluation of submissions by reviewing or judging them.

It is a common practice for teachers, professors and teaching assistants to get assignments and projects submitted by students, either electronically or otherwise. These assignments are graded and the students are given feedback on whatever they submitted and how can they improve it. In institutes where academic submissions are done electronically, there generally is a system (usually a web-based one) in place to assist in the collection and management of submissions.

In call-for-paper or academic conferences, prospective presenters are usually asked to submit a short abstract of their presentation or research work, which is reviewed before being accepted for the conference. Some conferences require researchers to submit a full paper of about 6–15 pages, which is peer reviewed by members of the conference's program committee and/or external reviewers chosen by them.

Most competitions and contests held world over usually have an initial screening round in which they accept nominations or entries from prospective participants. After all the nominations and entries have been received, the organizers of the competition or contest evaluate and shortlist the required number of entries on the basis of certain parameters set by them, notify the participants whose entries have been shortlisted and invite them to participate in further rounds of the competition or contest. Those whose entries were not shortlisted may also be given feedback by the organizers with a reason for the rejection and tips for improvement.

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