Submissions

Author Guidelines

Proposals

The Companion to Digital Editing Methods invites original submissions on any aspect of digital editing and the theory and practice of scholarly editing of historical and textual sources. Potential contributors are invited to discuss preliminary proposals with the editors. A proposal including a topic and a brief outline (max. 250 words) can be send to the general editor.

Submissions can fall in the categories "Essays" (5000-7000 words) or "Peer Dialogues" (2000-4000 words). Contributors are also invited to contact the general editor to discuss an alternative submission format.

Guidelines for submission

The Companion has a rolling publication system, which means that articles may be submitted at any time. Original articles written in English or Dutch are accepted. Translated articles and articles published elsewhere will not be accepted. Articles that are discovered to exhibit plagiarism, including self-plagiarism (wholesale repetition by an author of material published elsewhere) will automatically be rejected.

Outline of submission

Submissions should have the following components in this order:

1. Article title;
2. Name(s) of author(s);
3. An English abstract of approximately 150-250 words;
4. Up to 7 keywords in which only proper nouns are capitalized;
5. Text of the article itself (see suggested word counts above);
6. Biographical statement(s) of no more than 100 words about each author, including job title(s), affiliation(s), and email address.

Spelling

The Companion uses British-English spelling as defined in the Oxford Guide to Style, i.e., words ending in –our are spelled “honour”, “valour” (rather than American-English “honor”, “valor”), but the so-called “Oxford z” is used in words ending in –ize and –zation (“capitalize”, “organize”, “capitalization”, “organization”).

Double inverted commas (or quotation marks) are used with all in-text quotations and with words or phrases that are specially marked (for example a phrased marked in “scare quotes”). For quotations or words/phrases that are embedded in a quoted passage, single inverted commas are used (e.g., “The use of ‘scare quotes’ in academic writing is rising”).

All punctuation marks are placed outside of double inverted commas. A number of standard abbreviations, such as “e.g.” and “i.e.”, are followed by a comma.

Ellipses are indicated using three spaced dots closed by square brackets [. . .].

Numbers are written out for basic numbers (“three”, “forty-nine”, “six hundred”), but longer or more

Complex numbers are given in numerals (“the year 2000”, “1,570 variants”).

Use of dashes: for appositions use long m-dash preceded and followed by a single space. Number sequences are separated using an n-dash.

Quotations

Quotations must be functional for your argument and may not be used solely for the purposes of illustration. Only quotations longer than 5 lines of prose or 3 lines of verse must be set apart as block quotations, without inverted commas. All quotations must first be given in the original language (with citation) followed by a translation in English between round brackets and inverted commas (in text) or square brackets without inverted commas (block quotations). Where translations exist in a standard English edition, please use this translation followed by a citation.

Footnotes

The use of footnotes is permitted for excursus observations or exceptionally supplementary bibliographical information. However, please be aware that footnotes can be a distraction for the reader and so their use must remain functional. Absolutely no more than one footnote per sentence is permitted, with the footnote reference appearing at the end of the sentence.

Citation and bibliographical references

The Companion uses the author-date citation system. Please refer to the in-text citation guidelines of the APA that can be found here.

Workflow

Articles must be submitted using the journal's online submission system. After submission, the corresponding author will receive a confirmation by email. A detailed description of the next steps and what to expect appears below.

• Screening. Submissions which are out of the scope of the journal or fail to meet the criteria set above will be returned to the authors. This saves the time of everyone, especially the author;
• Review. Once all the submissions for a specific issue are received, reviewers will be assigned. Your article will be reviewed by two or three reviewers, a process that can take some months, and then a decision will be made: reject, revise, or accept. For submissions to the open call the Editors will identify competent reviewers with prompt availability. You are encouraged to register as a reviewer when you make your submission;
• Revision. The most common decision is to request at least some revisions; you'll be provided with the responses and feedback from the reviewers, and asked to address their concerns by making changes to the article within three weeks or so. After the revised submission is received, editors will check to see if the changes have adequately addressed the concerns of the reviewers, and will again render a decision (reject, revise, or accept). In some cases, we may request a previous or new reviewer to read the revision. If you reject the opinion of a reviewer, you may write a cover letter to the editors explaining your rationale;
• Acceptance. Once an article is accepted, an author agreement will be sent, along with any remaining comments that should be taken into account for revision;
  
• Copyediting. In the a copyediting phase, the submission which it will be edited by at least two of the journal's editors. More detailed attention will be paid to refinements of language, style and format. This can take some months, since we're often editing many articles at the same time;
• Input. The copyedited submission is entered in the Open Journals' system and an HTML and PDF version are generated. This step includes creating a link to the submission on the WordPress instance of the Companion.
• Proofing. The authors will be asked to do a final proofing of the submission;
• Publication. The article will be published and announced in various lists and venues.

You can well imagine that this entire process can take a great deal of time, especially since a great deal of it depends on the work of volunteers, and on yourself (and we know how busy you are). Please be patient and know that we will eventually get through the process and publish your article.