It seems that there are really good answers already in the Q/A:
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/has-anyone-use-this-source-to-submit-articles
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/are-there-any-good-websites-to-submit-articles-to
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/ezine-articles
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-are-the-best-article-sites-to-submit-to
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-it-safe-to-submit-the-same-article-to-multiple-sites
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/do-links-to-blog-articles-help-that-much
And, the short answer is that you should avoid submitting articles in such directories. Sometimes it will even harm your site.
Also, I noticed that my article on Ezine is copied to a bunch of low-quality web-sites. Of course they removed my on-page links.