Community contributions

Reviewing, editing, and publishing community submissions

The ISA RC42 Community Submissions spreadsheet serves as the editorial inbox for announcements submitted by members and colleagues through the website contact form. Submissions remain private until an administrator reviews and approves them for publication.

Contributions are first submitted through the Submit a Community Contribution to ISA RC42 Google Form. Each form submission is automatically recorded in the ISA RC42 Community Submissions spreadsheet, where administrators can review the information before deciding whether it should be published on the website.

Submissions remain private until an administrator reviews and approves them for publication.

Where the information is stored

Submissions are managed in Google Drive:

Google Drive
└── Core Spreadsheets
    └── ISA RC42 Community Submissions
        └── Tab: Editorial Review

Review and publish a submission

To review and publish a contribution:

  1. Open Google Drive and open ISA RC42 Community Submissions.
  2. Select the Editorial Review tab.
  3. Locate the row containing the submission you want to review.
  4. Review the submitted text. Optionally enter a revised headline in edited_title or a concise summary in edited_description.
  5. Set review_status to approved.
  6. Set publish_on_site to yes.
  7. Set display_member_name_authorized to yes if the contributor authorized displaying their name, or no to publish anonymously.
  8. Wait for the daily automatic update at 12:00 UTC or trigger an immediate update manually.
NotePublication condition

An item is published only when both conditions are met: review_status is set to approved and publish_on_site is set to yes. If either field is not set, the item remains unpublished.

Editorial fields reference

Field Purpose Accepted values
review_status Editorial decision for the submission pending, approved, or rejected
publish_on_site Controls publication to the website yes or no
edited_title Revised title displayed on the website Text (leaves original submission_title intact)
edited_description Revised summary displayed on the website Text (leaves original short_description intact)
display_member_name_authorized Controls display of contributor name yes or no
relevant_date Event date or deadline Date in YYYY-MM-DD format (e.g. 2026-11-15)
suggested_tags Subject keywords for search and filtering Comma-separated terms (e.g. conference, call, identity)

What happens after approval

Once a contribution has been approved (review_status = approved) and marked for publication (publish_on_site = yes), no additional publishing step is required. Approved contributions are published automatically when the scheduled Community Submissions Sync workflow runs each day at 12:00 UTC. After the workflow completes successfully, the website is rebuilt and the contribution appears on the Community Contributions page. Administrators can also run the workflow manually if the contribution needs to be published before the next scheduled update.

When the synchronization process runs:

  1. The script reads approved rows from the Editorial Review tab.
  2. Private fields (submitter_email, editorial notes, internal comments) are stripped automatically so that personal contact data is never exposed.
  3. The script generates public data files and updates the website RSS feed (feeds/community-contributions.xml).
  4. Quarto compiles and deploys the updated Community Contributions page.

Checking the published contribution

To verify that the contribution is online:

  1. Open https://isa-rc42.org/news/ in your web browser.
  2. Confirm that the title, description, relevant dates, and links appear correctly.
  3. If the page does not reflect recent changes, refresh your browser cache using Ctrl + F5 (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + R (Mac).

Common problems

  • Contribution does not appear online: Check that review_status is set to approved and publish_on_site is set to yes. If either value is missing, the submission is skipped.
  • Renamed column headers: Never change existing column names in the spreadsheet. The automation script relies on exact header names to identify fields.
  • Invalid date format: Enter dates in relevant_date using YYYY-MM-DD (for example, 2026-10-30).