University of California, Berkeley
Department of German

Submissions

Anyone may submit original scholarly or creative work to be considered for publication TRANSIT. We accept papers and multimedia concerning the special topic as well as any work dealing with issues of mobility in a German language context. Work pertaining to the special topic will be published in the special topic section in three rounds throughout the year. All other papers will appear in the open forum on a rolling basis. Every submission is peer reviewed before publication.

Please see our guidelines below for initial submission of manuscripts. The author is responsible for ensuring that his/her manuscript adheres to these formatting requirements before submitting it for peer review.

Before final publication to Adobe Portable Document Format ("PDF"), the manuscript will be subject to final preparation guidelines. To aid in final preparation for conversion to PDF, we provide final manuscript preparation guidelines to the authors.

Multimedia: Please email the editors at transitjournal@berkeley.edu for more specific information on submitting multimedia to TRANSIT, as projects, formats, and file types vary widely.

Review Essays: The purpose of including book reviews in TRANSIT is to introduce our readership to primary works concerning migration, travel and transnational issues published within the last three years. Our aim is to discuss the work thematically and stylistically and, when possible, to contextualize the work within the author's oeuvre or its respective genre. We accept reviews written in English or German.

Submitting an article:

Before you begin, please be sure you have the following items:

Make sure that your contact information is complete and correct, as the editors of the journal may need to contact you regarding your submission. We will never share any of this information without your permission. Be sure to give your name and affiliation exactly as they should appear on a published article (including appropriate capitalization and punctuation). If you do not wish to enter any institutional affiliation, please write "none."

Please send submissions and inquiries to transitjournal@berkeley.edu

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Call For Papers

The editors of TRANSIT -- a new internet-based, multidisciplinary journal published by the German Department at the University of California, Berkeley -- invite submissions for its 2007 issue on the topic "Changing Communities: Literature, Media, and the Arts." Papers for the first round, to appear in Summer 2007, should be submitted by April 30, 2007.

TRANSIT is a refereed internet journal in German Studies indexed in the MLA International Bibliography. TRANSIT seeks to push boundaries both of traditional scholarship and of print publication. The journal’s online format enables authors to integrate multimedia content (images, film clips, spoken text, and music) into their work. We welcome critical and creative work, in English or German, from all areas in which mobility and transition are major forces, from translation to travelogues and other forms of cultural transfer.

Special Topic 2007: Changing Communities

The Special Topic for this year focuses on communities and aesthetic expression in a wide variety of media. Mobility and new media challenge essentialist notions of community; aesthetic works can respond to such notions and potentially act as agents of change. The domains of inquiry may be diverse, ranging from medieval courtly culture to eighteenth-century reading communities and global internet networks. Submissions for the Special Topic should address the interaction between changing communities and literature, media, and the arts.

Possible topics for the "Changing Communities" issue include:

Please submit your article to the editors at transitjournal@berkeley.edu .

The deadline to be included in the first round of the 2007 issue is April 30, 2007

OPEN FORUM:

In addition to the Special Topic, each issue of TRANSIT offers an Open Forum for scholarly and creative work on issues of transition and travel in German cultural production, from Parzival and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre to the road movies of Wim Wenders. We are also interested in multidisciplinary analysis of non-canonical texts, debates, new media, and material culture. We appreciate comparative studies that frame German examples within larger theoretical and historical concerns, and we especially encourage essays that make creative use of available multimedia technologies.

We consider submissions for the Open Forum at any time.

If you have questions, please contact us at transitjournal@berkeley.edu.

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Guidelines

STYLE GUIDE

This document provides details on copyediting, typesetting, and layout requirements and recommendations pertaining to final manuscript submission to this eScholarship Repository journal.

Copyediting

We will not copyedit manuscripts, but will add the title page, pagination, and headers/footers. Authors are expected to be their own copyeditors. This means that authors need to pay attention to the editing and formatting of their manuscripts.

Formatting Requirements

Additional Recommendations

Indenting, Line Spacing, and Justification

Indent all paragraphs except those following a section heading. An indent should be at least 2 em-spaces.

Do not insert extra space between paragraphs of text with the exception of long quotations, theorems, propositions, special remarks, etc. These should be set off from the surrounding text by additional space above and below.

All text should be left-justified (i.e., flush with the left margin–except where indented). Where possible, it should also be right-justified (i.e., flush with the right margin). "Where possible" refers to the quality of the justification. For example, LATEX and TEX do an excellent job of justifying text. Word does a reasonable job. But some word processors do a lousy job (e.g., they achieve right justification by inserting too much white space within and between words). It is better to have jagged right margins than to have flush right margins with awkward intra- and inter-word spacing. Make your decision on whichever looks best.

Article Length

We prefer articles between 25-30 pages including footnotes/endnotes, As this journal publishes electronically, we will consider exceptional scholarship that is of greater length.

Colored text: Set the font color to black for the majority of the text. We encourage authors to take advantage of the ability to use color in the production of figures, maps, etc.; however, you need to appreciate that this will cause some of your readers problems when they print the document on a black-and-white printer. For this reason, you are advised to avoid the use of colors in situations where their translation to black and white would render the material illegible or incomprehensible.

Emphasized text: Whenever possible use italics to indicate text you wish to emphasize rather than underlining it. The use of color to emphasize text is discouraged.

Font faces: Except, possibly, where special symbols are needed, use a single serif font (e.g., Times New Roman). If you desire a second font, for instance for headings, use a sans serif font (e.g., Arial or Computer Modern Sans Serif).

Font size: The main body of text should be set at 12 point. Footnotes should be 10 pt.

Foreign terms: Whenever possible, foreign terms should be set in italics rather than underlined.

Headings: Headings (e.g., start of sections) should be distinguished from the main body text by their fonts or by using small caps. Use the same font face for all headings and indicate the hierarchy by reducing the font size.

Main text: The font for the main body of text must be black and, if at all possible, in a serif font such as Times Roman, Garamond, Palatino, Computer Modern Roman.

Titles: Whenever possible, titles of books, movies, etc., should be set in italics rather than underlined.

Tables and Figures

To the extent possible, tables and figures should appear in the document near where they are referenced in the text. Large tables or figures should be put on pages by themselves. Avoid the use of overly small type in tables. In no case should tables or figures be in a separate document or file.

Mathematics

Roman letters used as variables in mathematical expressions should be italicized. Roman letters used as part of multi-letter function names should not be italicized. Whenever possible, subscripts and superscripts should be a smaller font size than the main text.

Short mathematical expressions should be typed inline. Longer expressions should appear as display math. Also expressions using many different levels (e.g., such as the fractions) should be set as display math. Important definitions or concepts can also be set off as display math.

Equations should be numbered sequentially. Whether equation numbers are on the right or left is the choice of the author(s). However, you are expected to be consistent in this.

Symbols and notation in unusual fonts should be avoided. This will not only enhance the clarity of the manuscript, but it will also help insure that it displays correctly on the reader's screen and prints correctly on her printer. When proofing your PDF, pay particular attention to the rendering of the mathematics, especially symbols and notation drawn from other than standard fonts.

References

The default style for referencing resources used either directly or indirectly in work published in TRANSIT is the Modern Language Association style (MLA). We accept other citation styles, as long as they are employed in a thorough and consistent manner.

Please refer to the following resources for more detailed information on the MLA format:

A Research Guide for Students. Lee, I. 10 Dec 2003. 17 Dec 2003:
<http://www.aresearchguide.com>

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th Ed. New York: Modern Language Association, 2003.

Using Modern Language Association (MLA) Format. Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) Dec 2003. Purdue University. 17 Dec 2003:
<http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html>

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Policies

Copyright Information

Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works, unless the authors, as a condition of employment, have agreed to transfer copyright to their employer.

Basic policies for the eScholarship Repository are delineated at eScholarship policies. All eScholarship Repository content may be browsed and downloaded at no cost and with no access restrictions. Once an article is published in an eScholarship Repository journal or peer-reviewed series, it may not be removed. The California Digital Library has the right to view and display, store and copy (for preservation purposes), and distribute all eScholarship Repository content.

Peer Review Process

Faculty reviewing articles for TRANSIT are asked to use the same standards they would for a leading journal in the field. We are concerned with originality, coherence, clarity, and significance of the material. Comments, critiques, and suggestions are conveyed to the author, but the reviewer's identity remains confidential. To be published, an article or monograph must receive two positive reviews, and the author must revise the work to address questions raised in the reviews.

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