Author Guidelines
Please ensure that you consider the following guidelines when preparing your manuscript. Failure to do so may delay the processing of your submission. Please note that there are no set article lengths, though authors are encouraged to be as concise as their subject matter and approach allows.
Article types
- Research articles must present previously unpublished arguments or the outcomes and application of unpublished original research in the application of digital technology to medieval subjects. These should make a substantial contribution to knowledge and understanding in the subject matter. Research Articles are refereed
- Method articles should outline, test and discuss the application and significance of new techniques or critique or propose modifications to existing techniques in the application of the Digital Humanities to medieval studies. In contrast to research articles, method and review articles may discuss techniques that have not yet been applied to medieval subjects, provided their (potential) relevance to medievalists is (made) clear. Method Articles are refereed.
- Commentary articles should reflect upon or critique current events or methods and approaches related to the intersection of computation and medieval studies. Authors interested in submitting a commentary piece should discuss the content with the editor before submitting a manuscript. Commentary Articles may be refereed.
- Review articles can cover topics such as current controversies in or the historical development of the intersection of computation and medieval studies. Articles should critically engage with the relevant body of extant literature. Review Articles may be refereed.
- Book/Website reviews discuss the strengths and weaknesses of one or more recently published works. Book/Website reviews are always commissioned, although the editorial board will consider proposals. Book/Website reviews are usually not refereed.
Peer review
All submissions are initially assessed by an Editor, who decides whether or not the article fits the scope of the journal and is suitable for peer review. Submissions considered suitable are assigned to one or more independent experts, who assess the article for clarity, validity, and sound methodology.
The journal operates a modified single-blind peer review process. This means that referees remain anonymous unless they recommend acceptance. Referees who recommend acceptance will be identified in the article colophon as “recommending referee” should the article be accepted for publication.
We encourage referees to review the article as soon as possible, preferably within four weeks. Please let us know if you expect to require more time than this.
Reviewers are asked to provide formative feedback, even if an article is not deemed suitable for publication in the journal. Based on the reviewer reports, the editor will make a recommendation for rejection, minor or major revisions, or acceptance. Overall editorial responsibility rests with the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, who is supported by an expert, international team of editors.
Copyright notice
Authors who publish with Digital Medievalist agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
Licence
Digital Medievalist allows the following licences for submission: CC BY 4.0.
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Publication fees
Digital Medievalist does not charge any author fees.
Digital Medievalist is published by the Open Library of Humanities. Unlike many open-access publishers, the Open Library of Humanities does not charge any author fees. This does not mean that we do not have costs. Instead, our costs are paid by an international library consortium.
If your institution is not currently supporting the platform, we request that you ask your librarian to sign up. The OLH is extremely cost effective and is a not-for-profit charity. However, while we cannot function without financial support and we encourage universities to sign up, institutional commitment is not required to publish with us.
Publication cycle
Digital Medievalist is published online as a continuous volume and issue throughout the year. Articles are made available as soon as they are ready to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in getting content publicly available.
Special collections of articles are welcomed and will be published as part of the normal issue, but also within a separate collection page.
Structure of submissions
Submissions normally should be structured as follows:
- Title Page
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Main text
- Appendices (optional)
- Acknowledgements (optional)
- Competing interests (optional)
- Ethics and consent (if applicable)
- Author contributions (multiple-author papers only)
- Works cited
Title Page
Your title page must include the following information:- Submission Title
- Author name, Affiliation, and email address (one line per author)
Title
Please ensure that your submission has a title that adequately describes its content. In the case of Book/Website reviews of a single work, the article title is the bibliographic information of the work under review. Book/Website reviews dealing with more than one work may have a title that is distinct from the works reviewed.
Author name, affiliation, and email address
Author names should be provided in the form and order you wish them to be published. Please include an affiliation for each author.
- For authors associated with an organisation (e.g. university, research institute, corporation, etc.), the affiliation is the name of the organisation with an optional geographic identifier (i.e. city, region, or country).
- For authors without an organisational affiliation, please use a relevant geographic identifier (i.e. city, region, or country).
An email address should be provided for the corresponding author.
Abstract
Articles must have the main text prefaced by an abstract of approximately 300 words summarising the main arguments and conclusions: a good abstract provides the reader with a complete overview of the article. This must have the heading ‘Abstract’ and be easily identified from the start of the main text. The abstract should also be added to the article metadata during submission.Keywords
Please provide a list of up to six keywords or phrases that describe the subject matter of your submission, separated by semicolons. The keywords should also be added to the article metadata during submission.Main text
The body of the submission should be structured in a logical and easy-to-follow manner. A clear introduction section should be provided that allows non-specialists in the subject an understanding of the publication and a background of the issue(s) involved. The remainder of the article should be divided into appropriate subdivisions and labelled with descriptive headers. As a rule, no more than four levels of subdivision (and subheadings) should be used. Subheadings should use sentence case. If you use more than one level of subdivision and subheading, please indicate this clearly using a style hierarchy (e.g. “Heading 1,” “Heading 2,” “Heading 3” in Word or LibreOffice).Acknowledgements (optional)
If your article has acknowledgements, please place these in a clearly-labelled section after the main body and before the references.Competing interests (optional)
Competing and conflicting interests must be declared. Guidelines for competing interests can be found here. Please describe these (if present) in a clearly-labelled section after the main body and before the references.Ethics and consent (if applicable)
Research involving human subjects, material, or data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee and the authors should include a clearly labelled statement after the main body and before the references detailing this approval, including the name of the ethics committee and reference number of the approval (if applicable). Experiments using animals must follow national standards of care. Further information is avaialbe.Author contributions (multiple-author papers only)
Articles written by more than one author should describe the contributions of each author. We require the CASRAI CRediT contributor role typology. This typology should be placed in a clearly labelled section after the main body and before the references. Please use the following format. Authors are identified by lowercase initials only (without periods) separated by commas:- Explanation for author order: i.e. “Authors are listed in alphabetical order,” “Authors are listed in descending order by significance of contribution,” “Authors are listed in a randomised order,” etc.;
- Identification of the corresponding author: e.g “The corresponding author is xy”;
- A table describing author roles, followed by the initials of the relevant author, with each author separated by commas. More than one author may be listed after each role; individual authors commonly fulfil more than one role. Omit any roles not relevant to the article. Please contact the editors if you would like assistance with this requirement. The following is a hypothetical example using all elements in the typology for a six author paper written by ab, cd, ef, gh, ij, and kl.
- Conceptualization: ab,cd,ef;
- Methodology: cd,ef;
- Software: gh,ab,cd;
- Validation: ij;
- Formal Analysis: kl,ab,cd;
- Investigation: ab,cd,ef;
- Resources: ef;
- Data Curation: ab;
- Writing – Original Draft Preparation: ab,cd;
- Writing – Review & Editing: ab,ef;
- Visualization: ef;
- Supervision: ab;
- Project Administration: xy;
- Funding Acquisition: ab.
Details of what these terms mean can be found in the CASRAI Dictionary.