Managing a call for papers without a spreadsheet or shared inbox

Alexandre Cuvier · August 18, 2026 · 6 min

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Many small independent journals launch their calls for papers the same way: a row in a spreadsheet to track responses, a shared inbox for correspondence, and a PDF or Word file for the announcement itself. It works for the first call. It gets complicated fast starting with the second.

What breaks in practice

• One author replies to the call by email, another submits their submission directly elsewhere: nothing links the two, and someone has to manually cross-reference who actually responded to which call.
• The shared inbox becomes the only source of truth, but not everyone has the same access to it, and a thread always ends up getting lost eventually.
• The spreadsheet reflects the state of things whenever someone last remembered to update it, not the actual state. Two people on the editorial team end up with two different versions.
• The call’s deadline lives in the published announcement, not in a system that reminds anyone as it approaches.

The real problem: two systems that don’t talk to each other

The visible symptom is confusion. But the cause is that the call for papers and the submissions live in two separate places with no link between them. A spreadsheet doesn’t know a submission exists. An inbox doesn’t know where its review stands. All the coordination ends up depending on someone’s memory.

What it looks like when it’s connected

In Peerflow, a call for papers is tied to a single issue from the moment it’s created. An author submitting a submission can respond to that call directly from the submission form: no need to cross-reference an email against a spreadsheet row, the link already exists in the system. The call’s deadline is publicly visible on the journal’s portal, and every submission received in response shows up in the same place on the editorial dashboard, with its own status (submitted, under review, revisions requested, accepted, rejected).

The practical result: at any point, one question, “where does this call stand,” has one answer, visible to the whole editorial team without reopening an email thread or hoping the spreadsheet is current.

What about a guest editor running the issue?

An external guest editor usually doesn’t have an account on the journal’s platform, and shouldn’t need to create one just to follow “their” issue. They receive a personal link that gives them read-only tracking access, no password required: they see the submissions tied to the call they’re running, without having to ask for a status update by email every time.

What the spreadsheet actually got right, to be fair

A spreadsheet stays flexible: you put whatever you need in it, without waiting for a tool to anticipate the exact field you want. A structured system like Peerflow imposes a format: that helps coordination, but also assumes that format matches how your journal actually works. That’s a real trade-off, not something to wave away.