Guide to Smart Search

What is Smart Search?

Smart Search is one of Duotrope's newest search options. Whereas our Advanced Publisher Search and Advanced Agent Search options give you complete control over every nuance of your search criteria and can return thousands of results,

Smart Search whittles it down to the most essential options and provides a manageable list of search results that's curated and updated daily. This helps you find the publishing gems with as little effort as possible.

You can run the exact same search every day and get different results each time, which can introduce you to different projects that meet your specifications, but in bite-size chunks.

What Smart Search Isn't:

Smart Search is not a "best of" list. If it were a "best of" list, it wouldn't change every day, and that would be boring. Instead of being a "best of" list, think of it as a quality list that changes every day. "Best of" is subjective. To some, it could mean the most popular. For others, it might mean the highest paying, or the most difficult to break into. If you are looking for "best of" lists at Duotrope (whatever that means to you), you have some options. See our Statistical Reports for lists of the most challenging, most liked, and most submitted to publishers, and if you care about payment, use the Payment filter options in your searches, especially Advanced Search.

How to use Smart Search

There are a few different ways to use Smart Search:

Running your own Smart Search (Duotrope account required)

From the Smart Search page, select your options.

Category: You can switch between Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Visual Art using the "Switch to" options at the top of the page.

You must make a selection for at least one of these (see our Glossary for terms and definitions):

• Genre: Applies to fiction and poetry. Use "General" for non-genre works.
• Style: Applies to fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
• Length/Type: Applies to all categories.
  Include agents: If you select a book-length option, you will be able to include Agents as well as publishers.
• Poetry Form: Applies to poetry only.
• Topic: Applies to nonfiction only.
• Medium: Applies to visual art only.

Finally, refine your search results with these options:

• Max. Results: Duotrope members can select between 10 and 50 results, maximum. Non-members are limited to 10.
• Sort By: You can sort by title, by the number of submissions reported to us, by acceptance rate, or by average response times. (Note: For acceptance rate and average response time, Wildcards will be sorted to the bottom of the list, since we don't have enough data on those yet.)
• Fees: You can choose to include publishers with fee-based submissions.
• Pay: Duotrope members can choose to limit their results to paying publications only. Non-members do not have this option.
  Unknown Pay: Many Duotrope listings have "Unknown" pay if the details aren't known but we believe that they do pay. You can choose to include those in the results.
• Wildcards: You can choose to include "Wildcards" (see below).
• Exact Matches Only: You can choose to have your results only include exact matches. Otherwise, it will include "fuzzy" matches (see below).

Reading the Results

The results list quite a bit of information, but when you're ready to learn even more, click the title or cover image to go to Duotrope's full listing.

Favorite, Ignore, and Tagging Results (Duotrope subscribers only)

Smart Search allows you to add listings to your Favorites List, your Ignore List, and to Tag listings. Simply check the listings you want to Favorite/Ignore/Tag and then use the form at the bottom of the page to make those changes. Note that Smart Search results, as with Advanced Search results, will never include listings that you have added to your Ignore List.

Other Powerful Ways to Use Smart Search

From your List of Pieces: (Duotrope subscribers only)

From your List of Pieces, you can run a Smart Search for any piece that has enough details provided to search on. If the option isn't available, we highly recommend updating the piece with those details: Genre, Length, etc.

When you run a Smart Search from your List of Pieces, the results automatically exclude places you've already submitted that piece, as well as places where you have submissions pending. This helps you pick the next place(s) to submit that piece quickly and efficiently.

From your Saved Searches: (Duotrope subscribers only)

If you have any Saved Searches, you can also run a Smart Search from those criteria. Obviously, Smart Search doesn't have as many options as Advanced Search, but running those searches as Smart Searches can help you spot some gems you might overlook if your Advanced Search returns hundreds of results.

How is Smart Search Curated?

We developed a sophisticated system for selecting the short list of results, which is based on a number of quantitative (not subjective) criteria, including but not limited to:

• The publication's average response time¹
• The publication's acceptance rate¹
• The publication's rate of non-response¹ (submissions reported "lost" or "never responded")

¹ Based on statistics compiled from submissions reported to Duotrope.

The system especially rewards fast responders, so you don't waste your time. Other factors, such as the number of people reporting submissions, are given lower priority but still evaluated.

The results of any given search will remain mostly the same through a 24-hour period.² Then, if possible, a new set of results will be presented for the same search criteria the next day. Within the 24-hour period,² the results will fluctuate only for major changes, such as a publication closing to submissions, or if you add a listing to your Ignore List.

² The 24-hour period starts and ends around 6AM Mountain Time.

Does Smart Search use AI?

No, Smart Search does not use "AI" or machine learning. Like all of Duotrope's features, the Smart Search algorithm was developed entirely by us, and it uses good, old-fashioned human ingenuity, not artificial/machine "intelligence."