Submissions

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht The Journal for Diaconia Instructions for Authors

Submitting an Article to the Journal for Diaconia

The Journal for Diaconia is an interdisciplinary journal welcomes submissions from across vari- ous fields of research, including (but not limited to) theology, sociology, philosophy, health stud- ies, social work, gender studies, leadership studies, and anthropology.

To submit your article to the Journal for Diaconia, you must visit our online submission platform. If you have never created an account, you must do that first before submission by clicking on the “Register” menu option. If you have an ORCID iD, you will be able to connect and use that.

Once you have created a profile on the submission platform, you will be able to upload your article (with- out any identification in the corpus of the article), your abstract, and your keywords following the style guide below. Once this process is complete, your article will be reviewed (two double-blind, peer reviews).

If you have any questions or problems about submission or the Journal for Diaconia, please email Jeremy Heuslein (the Editorial Assistant) at journalfordiaconia@gmail.com.

I. General matters

Manuscripts should be submitted in electronic form. Authors are strongly advised to hand in finalized manuscripts only. They will keep a copy of their submitted work themselves in case of questions arising. Font size should be 12 point, footnotes 10 point, Times New Roman (Unicode- font), no hyphenation, unjustified setting.

1. Files should be in a .docx format.

2. Consistency of style is paramount. Please stick to the editing styles given below.

3. Apart from the text corpus the manuscripts should include a bibliography.

4. Authors are expected to submit a typescript that is in its final form and will only require a minimum of copy-editing. It is thus expected that all authors will submit manuscripts which conform to the guidelines given here.

Manuscripts which do not conform to these guidelines will be returned to the author for retyping before acceptance.

Once a manuscript has been accepted, it may be returned to check any editorial changes made and/or for corrections of factual and typographical errors in the original submission. However, it will not be possible to make other changes to the manuscript at that stage. Authors are therefore asked to conform to the following conventions as closely as possible in order to reduce the amount of copy-editing required to a minimum.

The final manuscript for an article should include:

- Main title
- Sub title (if it exists)
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Main text with headings (if exist: subheadings): Headings need to be numbered (1. /1.1 / 1.1.1)
- E-mail-address information on authors, including primary institutional affiliation, and city (and
country). Please also include your mailing address.

II. Layout of manuscript

1. Typographical issues

N-Dash and hyphen

Apart from using dash in between thoughts (e.g., “This history is probably unhistorical – as Bultmann said long ago.”) use N-Dash in between numbers (dates, references to biblical texts, page numbers, e.g. 1997–2003, Ex 3:5–10, 2–19). On your computer via “Alt” + 0150 on your number block.

Hyphenation occurs only in between double-barrel names and terms.

Spaces

No space in front of punctuation marks, following an opening and in front of a closing bracket, following inverted commas, within abbreviations (e.g., i.e.), in between initials (e.g. G.W.F. Hegel), within dates (DD.MM.YY) and following f/ff (e.g. 23ff).

Abbreviations

For reference to the next following page use “f”, for the next two pages use “ff” (without punctuation).
For “volume”/“volumes” use “vol.” (no plural s). For “editor”/“editors” use “ed.” For “ibidem” use “ibid.”

Use a stop after an abbreviation which ends in a letter other than the last letter of the original word, otherwise omit stop. Hence: ed. (=editor), p. (=page), but Dr (=Doctor), St (=Saint), edn (=edition) etc.

Use standard abbreviation of biblical books.

NB: No punctuation following book titles.

Highlighting

Please keep formatting in the text document to a minimum.

For highlighting words or phrases and in order to mark metalinguistic and colloquial terms use italics. Refrain from using bold print, underlining or b l o c k a d e s. People’s names are not highlighted in the text.

Numbers

Spell out numbers from one to nineteen as well as decimal numbers (twenty, thirty, forty, etc.). Annual dates in four digits (e.g. 1974), dates should follow the format of DD.MM.YY. BC/AD or BCE/CE respectively may be added for clarity.

Biblical references: e.g. Mk 3:2–10 or Joel 2:2.10f, 3:4. Use square brackets [...] within brackets (...).

For capitalisation, no standard requirements are suggested for words which are sometimes (but not always) capitalised (e.g. J/jewish, G/gentile, C/church, G/gospel). Authors are however requested to seek to ensure that, as far as possible, their use of capitals is consistent within the manuscript as a whole.

2. Quotations and references

Quotations

All quotations should be placed within quotation marks (“double inverted commas”); quotations within quotations should be in ‘single inverted commas’.

Quotations involving three or more lines of typescript are normally displayed, i.e. presented as a separate paragraph, indented, without quotation marks, and in a smaller font size.

E.g., As Bultmann says,

The message of Jesus is a presupposition for the theology of the New Testament rather than a part of that theology itself. For New Testament theology consists in the unfolding of those ideas by means of which ...

Quotations should be given verbatim in relation to spelling, capitalisation etc. of the original ver- sion, also including errors (though this can be indicated by e.g. “(sic)” or “(?)” by the author if felt necessary). Changes within quotations by the author should be indicated. Ellipses and amend- ments should appear in square brackets, longer additions to quotations should end with the ini- tials of the author to indicate source of amendment. In quotations including a highlighted passage or phrase source of emphasis (if placed by the one who is quoted or by the one who is quoting an- other) should be accounted for in a footnote.

Punctuation in relation to quotations: punctuation (e.g. full stop) should be within the quotation marks if the sentence in the quotation is complete, otherwise it should be outside the quotation marks.

Please use the correct marks

“...” inverted commas
‘...’ single inverted commas
’ apostrophe (also genitive-s) (Alt + 0146)
NB: In some text processing programmes it suffices to type in: Alt + 146.

Bibliographical notes for quotations and references

For bibliographical notes for quotations and references to further literature in the text use the author-date citation. Complete bibliographical references can be found in the bibliography at the end of the article.

Within brackets following a quotation or phrase to/from which one wants to refer to fur- ther literature place author: year of publication, page number. In cases where reference is made to more than one publication within the same year by the same author differentiate titles by adding a, b, c to the year of publication.
If more than one title is referred to, separate individual entries by a semicolon.
Punctuation marks behind brackets.
Indirect quotations can be referred to by using “cf.”
Use of “ibid.” is strongly discouraged. In cases, however, where misunderstandings can

be ruled out and a quotation from the previous sentence is again referred to in the fol- lowing, use “ibid.” or “ibid., page number”.

Examples:

Following this line the main scientific task of Practical theology is said to do research not on concrete particular situations, but on “classes of situations” (van der Ven: 2001, 20).

Taxonomic frameworks, as offered for example in structural and symbolic anthropology, seem to provide a hermeneutical lens to interpret ritualized activity and a key for the per- ception of what happens “behind the curtain” (cf. e.g. Bieler: 2003, 236–242).

According to Geertz the power of rituals can be recognized in the symbolic fusion of both ethos and world view (cf. Bell: 1992; Geertz: 1973).
If general reference is made to a publication, the relevant year of publication is placed in brackets immediately following the author’s name.
Example:
Jick (1979) highlights in an early publication concerning the triangulation of methods the importance and the challenging character of the integration of qualitative and quantita- tive research strategies.

• Internet sources:
Internet sources should be given as full URL including the web-link. Adding the date of your last call is paramount.

Example:

John P. Kretzmann and John McKnight, "Introduction to Asset-Mapping" (2003), 1. Available at https://resources.depaul.edu/abcd-institute/resources/Documents/IntroAssetMapping.pdf (retrieved on 13 July 2020)

3. Footnotes

Footnotes should be kept short accommodating only those remarks that would hinder the read- ing within the main text corpus.

Any references in footnotes should also follow the author-date citation model (see above). NOTA BENE: Do not use footnotes to make references that are needed in the main corpus of the article (these references should be given with in-line citation).
Footnote numbering should be set behind punctuation marks except in cases where ref- erence is made to the specific individual word just in front of punctuation mark.
Footnotes should be numbered consecutively within each article. Footnotes start with a capitalised word and end with a full stop.

4. Bibliography

Consistency of style is also paramount regarding bibliographical notes! Please follow the guidelines given below.

General issues

Every reference starts with the author’s name, the initial of their first name(s), the year of publication in brackets (if necessary supplemented by a, b, c, etc.) followed by a comma.
Every reference ends with a full stop.
Stick to English even when referring to non-English publications and abbreviate consis-

tently “ed.” and “vol.” Put original title in [brackets], as demonstrated.
Multiple authors/editors/places of publication are separated by a slash without spaces in

between.
Reference to monographs and collected volumes: State name of the publishing house and

separate place of publication and name of the publishing house by a colon.
In cases where the author of a title is unknown the first letter of the first meaningful

noun of the title should be placed in the bibliography in alphabetical order. This noun

also serves as reference in the text.
Reference to the edition in superscript in front of date of publication, e.g. Bentley, E.,

The Life of the Drama, London: Methuen 21966.
Titles of book series, journals and dictionary entries should be abbreviated, if possible.
Up to three consecutive pages or columns can be referred to by using f/ff (without punctuation). For four or more pages please give exact page numbers.

Examples:

Monograph:

Stone, B.P., Faith and Film. Theological Themes at the Cinema, St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000.

Beaudoin, T., Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998.

Journal essay:

Scholtz, C., Fascinating Technology: Computer Games as an Issue for Religious Education, BJRE 27 (2005a), 173–184.

Giori, A., The Theory, Practice, and Evaluation of the Phenomenological Method as a Qualita- tive Research Procedure, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 28 (1997), 235–260.

Essay in collected volume:

Bieler, A., ‘You never look into another person’s eyes while passing the peace’. Hybridität und Ritualisation als Kategorien einer kritischen Liturgiewissenschaft im multikulturellen Kontext, in: U. Schwab/E. Hauschildt (ed.), Praktische Theologie im 21. Jahrhundert, Köln: Kohlhammer, 2002, 9–21.

Slough, R.J., ‘Let Every Tongue by Art Refined, Mingle Its Softest Notes With Mine’: An Explo- ration of Hymn-Singing Events and Dimensions of Knowing, in: M. Aune/V. de Marinis (ed.), Religious and Social Ritual: Interdisciplinary Explorations, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996, 175–208.

Dictionary entry:

Colpe, C., Article: „Religion und Religionswissenschaft“, TRT 4, 1983, 123–12

Thank you for your cooperation!

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