Story Submission .....

Do you have a burning desire to share your insight and technical expertise with other COBOL users? If so submit your article to COBOL Magazine. We are looking for users, Programmers, application developers, and experienced freelance writers to write articles and books that provide specific and useful information aimed at making our readers more successful in their use of COBOL products and technology.

Before submitting an article, please familiarize yourself with our publications by looking around this site. Check out the editorial calendar for the year. Also review our Writers Guidelines

Audience

The typical reader of COBOL Magazine is: already using COBOL products; a power user, or becoming a power user; intelligent, and often largely self-taught in his or her areas of expertise; looking for ways to become even more successful using COBOL products; and looking for straightforward, compelling, step-by-step material relevant to his or her technology needs.

COBOL Magazine Opportunities

COBOL Magazine has standing requirements for the following types of articles:

• case studies that describe fast paths and pitfalls of actual projects and implementations
• tips, tricks, and techniques for using a particular product, product feature, or process
• performance planning
• step-by-step articles about using current Compilers to create applications or are involved in migrations.

We are particularly interested in technical articles that provide specific information that helps our readers become more successful in their jobs in the following COBOL technologies:

• COBOL Database integration
• COBOL GUI applications
• COBOL Applications  for new technologies like PDA’s
• COBOL web front ends
• COBOL and Java/J2EE development
• COBOL on Linux
• Security
• Mobile technologies

Ideally, technical articles for COBOL Magazine should be between 2,500 and 3,000 words (exclusive of code listings).

When writing a technical article, focus on adding value for the reader. Help readers make their use of COBOL products and technology more successful. Consider the following questions:

• How will readers benefit from reading your article?
• Will they learn a new technique?
• Will they work more effectively if they implement the list of tips you provide?
• Will they get started with a new product more successfully based on the implementation plan you outline?
• Provide rules-of-thumb and guidelines for readers whenever possible, including pointing out obstacles they might encounter and offering workarounds for obstacles.
• If talking about a specific project, what do you know now that you wish you knew before you started?

In short, articles should give readers the inside track on how to use COBOL products more effectively.

Submit an Abstract

Cobol Magazine receives many unsolicited article submissions, and can publish very few of them. Because our opportunity for unsolicited articles is so limited, we highly recommend that you consider sending us an abstract for your proposed article before sending the article. The information in an article abstract is important to us; it is the kind of information we use when describing upcoming articles internally and to COBOL partners.

A good abstract also helps focus on why the article is important and will be of interest to readers. We recommend that an abstract address the following questions:

• What is the business problem/situation?
• What is the current or old technology solution (if any)?
• What is the new and/or better COBOL technology solution?
• How does the new COBOL technologies exceed the current or old solution?

Submit your abstracts in e-mail to Articles@COBOLMagazine.com

How to Submit an Article

Submit your article, proposal, or any questions to Articles@COBOLMagazine.com. Submit your articles in plain ASCII text, Rich Text Format (RTF), or Microsoft Word. Include your full name, e-mail address, postal mailing address, and daytime phone number.

Authorization to Publish an Article

When you submit an article, you are stating the following:

• that the article was created solely by you,
• that the article is an original work and not been published in any other form,
• that you authorize COBOL Magazine’s use, modification, reproduction, and distribution of the article, and
• that you are not restricted by contract (s) with your employer or other entity from having this article published.

Please do not submit articles that you've also submitted to another publication.

Response to Your Article Submission

If you've submitted a completed technical article for COBOL Magazine, please note that it can take a significant amount of time for us to evaluate your article. If you have not heard from us in a timely fashion, please send an inquiry to articles@COBOLMagazine.com about the status of your article. If you submit an article and decide for any reason that you no longer want the article to be published in COBOL Magazine, please send a request to withdraw the article from consideration.

COBOL Magazine receives many article submissions, and for every article we publish, there are many more submitted articles that we simply cannot publish. If your article is not selected for publication in COBOL Magazine, it is in no way a statement about the quality of the article. COBOL Magazine responds to the needs of the COBOL community and COBOL Magazine in determining the topics for articles published, and the reason that most submitted articles are not published is simply because the topics do not meet COBOL Magazine's current editorial needs.

Because of the number of article submissions received and evaluated, COBOL Magazine cannot provide detailed information on why we choose not to publish an article.

Compensation