Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How can I help?
Thank you for asking! See this page for ideas.

Q: How can I get notified when a new issue is out?
The best way is to subscribe to our mailing list - see the bottom of the main page for details. Alternatively you can trust that most Paged Out! Institute members will be posting notifications on their blogs / social media once a new issue is out. You can follow our account on X Paged Out!, where we will post updates on the new Issues. Finally, you can always join Gynvael's Discord (Paged Out! channel section).

Q: Can I contact you via chat somehow?
Yes, feel free to join Gynvael's Discord (Paged Out! channel section).

Q: How frequently are new issues published?
We aim for one per 3-4 months, but that's subject to deviations based on the number of received articles and processing power of the institute (after all, this is a hobby project for us).

Q: Why the 1 page per article limit?
[Gynvael] While reviewing/reading/writing articles for various technical IT magazines, I realized that nowadays almost all of them are pretty long (like 10 pages in print, or 20 pages in the "source" form). The length is usually the result of the selected topic, author's desire to explain everything in sufficient detail, and lengthy well-formatted code listings with verbose comments. That's just how programming articles must be, right?
Well, not really. For example in the late '80, one magazine page could house 2-3 programming articles. How was that possible? Usually, there just wasn't a lot of text in the article - a paragraph or two of introduction, or a note on an especially tricky part in the presented code, followed by a long manually minified program listing. This required the reader to actually try to reverse-engineer the code in order to understand it - but readers are smart and that was actually pretty fun to do it too.
The selected topics were commonly also quite different - instead of "everything you need to know about XYZ", the articles were more about individual code snippets or short programs that did or showcased something useful, fun (games!), clever or otherwise entertaining.
This led me to the idea of somehow convincing folks (hi!) to try and write short articles on different kind of topics - and thus I settled for the 1-page limit.
Actually, there is another benefit: it takes way less time to write a 1-page article than a longer one. It's also easier to review it. And it doesn't take too much time to read it from top to bottom.
I would also like to believe that there is less pressure to write about Typical Big Topics - there is just no way to do a complete C++49 tutorial on a single page, so how about just showcase this one fun new thing?
Of course 1-page articles will never replace full-sized ones, but then again, that's not really the goal here. The goal is to see if we can create informative 1-page articles that are fun to make, fun to read and don't require to allocate a lot of time on any front.

Q: Why does the author need to prepare the article layout?
In a typical magazine, the author writes the content in a rich-text editor, and then the publisher handles laying out everything on the pages. In our case, however, we decided to try a different model - one where it's up to the author to propose the layout. There are two reasons for this.
One reason is that it allows the authors to create non-standard "articles", like cheat sheets, diagrams or infographics, and also gives them full control over the layout.
The second reason is that we're operating with pretty limited resources (well, this is a free electronic magazine, from the community for the community) and offsetting the layouts to the authors is one of the trade offs we had to make.
We of course do realize that this means that article layouts will not be consistent, and neither will be e.g. fonts used. But we do think there's beauty in this chaos.

Q: Can I publish the article on my blog / somewhere else later on?
Yes! Regardless of which of the proposed licenses you select, you keep all the copyright (we just get a non-exclusive license). Furthermore, we'll send you the final PDF of your article in Paged Out! layout if you would like to use that. See Step 3: Select a license for your article for more details on the licenses you can use.
Note: If you plan to publish the article with another (e.g. commercial) publisher, please remember to let them know that you've already granted us the non-exclusive license (some publishers require exclusive licenses or copyright transfer, so this might be important).

Q: Can I repost/republish an old article in Paged Out!?
In general, yes. There are several things to note, however. First of all, you'll have to adapt the article to Paged Out!'s format (one page, etc). Secondly, if you've published the article with another publisher, be sure that you are still allowed to publish it with us (i.e. you didn't transfer the copyrights, nor give out an exclusive license). And thirdly, do include a footnote specifying where the article was originally published and when (to avoid self-plagiarism).

Q: Are the articles peer reviewed?
No. The articles are going through a review process, and the reviewers try their best to catch any inaccuracies. However, at the end of the day, that's a best effort thing only, and we don't always have a reviewer that's a subject matter expert.
Given this, please don't assume articles were peer reviewed and stay critical of what you read (well, that should always be true).

Q: Are you looking for reviewers? Can I become one?
In short, yes and yes.
Longer answer is, we are looking for volunteer reviewers both for regular and as needed help in reviewing articles for Paged Out! The one requirement we have for our reviewers is that they need to get to know the process from the perspective of an author – so the first thing you need to do to is write an article for us and then undergo a review process. Thus, if you want to help us and become a reviewer, find a topic, write one page about it and submit it to articles@pagedout.institute. Remember to consult our guidelines at Writing Articles.
Once the article is ready for publishing, let us know that you want to be a reviewer. We will ease you into the process by first assigning you three authors/articles to work with in categories that you feel comfortable in, and we will be there for you every step of the way.

Q: What's your business model?
Paged Out! isn't a business venture (though it is currently managed by a company; see August'23 update below) and our goal is not to make a living out of it. The goal is to create an experimental not-for-profit magazine that we ourselves would like to read and give something back to the community.
All expenses for the initial issues are paid for by Gynvael out of his own pocket. That being said, eventually we would like to make the magazine self-sustaining and still keep it free for downloading, sharing and printing. We have a few ideas how to do that - some examples: a crowdfunding profile (e.g. patreon), selling advertisement space in the magazine, or (eventually) selling nicely printed special editions (that's why we require commercial licenses for the articles).
August'23 update: For the time being management of Paged Out! is being entrusted to HexArcana Cybersecurity GmbH (a company fully owned by Gynvael). This allows us to simplify accounting, as well as to get some folks working on Paged Out! in a more consistent manner. Eventually – likely around 2025 (i.e. when Gynvael gets more cycles) – Paged Out! will fully move to its own non-profit foundation. At least that's the plan now.

Q: How much are you paying for an article?
Zero. As a not-for-profit project, we can't really offer much.
That said, if an issue by any chance turns some profit, we would like to share it with the authors of articles published in that issue. Please refer to Paged Out! Standard Author's Agreement for details. Do note that this does require the author to use the specific variant of SAA, as well as to work with us – and the company managing Paged Out! – to make sure all the accounting, tax and legal stuff is in order.

Q: How much do I have to pay to get my article published?
Zero. We do not charge for publishing articles. That being said, we like articles we select for publishing to meet a certain quality bar for obvious reasons.

Q: I didn't see any bar about privacy or accepting cookies! Why is that?
Oh, that's because we don't track you.

Q: But the law requi... wait, what?
We don't use any active or passive methods to track our users. There are no "user accounts" on this website, and we're fine with low-resolution statistics (like view/download count) for "project success" measurements.

Q: Your website sucks.
[Gynvael] Sorry, that's because I made it. However, some stuff has already been fixed and there rest is probably here to stay. So if you have any specific things bothering you, please let us know.