Source: https://journal.digitalmedievalist.org/article/10.16995/dm.1/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 06:51:30+00:00

Document:
An introduction and welcome to the first issue of the Digital Medievalist.
§ 1 Welcome to the first issue of the Digital Medievalist (DM). DM is an on-line, open access, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the use of digital tools and media in the study of medieval culture.
§ 2 The inaugural issue indicates the type of journal we hope to become. It is wide ranging and inter-generational. Our contributors include scholars at every stage of their academic careers, from graduate students to some of the pioneers in our discipline; their articles include project reports, tutorials, and discussions of how technology can be used to adapted to solve various research problems facing medievalists. It is also, we hope, rigorous and well-written. All articles have been reviewed by one or more disciplinary specialists, and all have been revised (in some cases several times) in light of this expert commentary.
§ 3 In addition to being a scholarly journal, DM is part of the Digital Medievalist project, a community of practice dedicated to the development and dissemination of best practice in the use of technology in Medieval Studies. DM is the most formal part of this larger project: we expect it to become a forum for the publication of considered opinion, historically interesting approaches and projects, and technological solutions of lasting note. Other aspects of the project are designed to encourage more informal and current interaction: the project also sponsors an electronic mailing list, dm-l (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/mailing.cfm) for day-to-day collaboration, a wiki (http://sql.uleth.ca/dmorgwiki/index.php/Main_Page) to encourage the communal development of best-practice standards, and a news server (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news.cfm) for publishing calls for papers, announcing new books, or releasing new information about tools and software. Over the next few months, we will be building a community reference site containing links to other projects and agencies and, in the longer term, a disciplinary bibliography.
§ 4 With the publication of this first issue, we would like to thank the many people and agencies who have helped us since the project's inception. Funding for the journal's publication has been provided by our publishers, the Curriculum Redevelopment Centre (CRDC) at the University of Lethbridge, the Dean of Arts and Science at the University of Lethbridge, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The CRDC is also responsible for designing and coding the entire Digital Medievalist site (including this journal). We thank in particular the director, Trevor Woods, Jon Lane (Dynamic Web Development & Web Design), and intern Ondy Ma for their hard and patient work on this site.
§ 5 Finally, we would like to thank the scholars who helped put this first issue together: the members of the DM editorial board (Peter Baker, James Cummings, Martin Foys, Murray McGillivray, Daniel O'Donnell, Roberto Rosselli del Turco, and Elizabeth Solopova), the readers (named and unnamed) who helped us vet the initial submissions and suggest areas for refinement, and of course, the authors themselves. The inaugural issue took longer than we anticipated to put together; we appreciate the patience of all involved.
§ 7 DM welcomes high quality submissions at any time. A guide is available with information about submission procedures, deadlines, our review policy, and formatting requirements (submission guidlines). DM accepts submissions for review in a variety of electronic formats, including all major word processor formats, HTML, and TEI P4 XML. Our goal is to offer a decision in two months and publication within three to nine. Deadlines for specific issues fall three months before publication: articles received before August 31st will be considered for publication in the fall (November) issue; articles received before December 31st will be considered for the spring (March) issue.
. Beginning with the second issue (DM 1.2, fall 2005), we also will publish reviews of electronic publications, tools, and projects.
. Authors considering submitting in TEI P4 are asked to contact the editors for an encoding guide.

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