Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

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 manuscript has been submitted solely to this journal and is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere. Authors should disclose any prior posting, publication or distribution of all or part of the manuscript to the Editor.
  • The corresponding author certifies to be authorized by all of the co-authors to submit the manuscript in its presented form.
  • The article, or any part thereof, does not violate any existing original or derivative copyright.
  • All personal identifiers are removed from the text and the properties to ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review.
  • Authors include a statement about any potential or perceived conflicts of interest in the Comments for the Editor.
  • By submitting a manuscript, authors with a doctorate declare their willingness to be available as reviewers for the RpB.
  • Authors whose mother tongue is not English will send the final version of the paper to a native speaker of English with a sound academic background in the social sciences for language editing. This check has to be done at the authors's own expenses.
  • The literature cited in the article was checked for DOI resources; corresponding DOI addresses were integrated. An online tool for this check can be found at: https://apps.crossref.org/simpleTextQuery

Author Guidelines

ORCID

The RpB uses ORCID iDs. When submitting an article, all authors must enter their ORCID iD in the author profile under Public. You do not have an ORCID iD  yet?

General Information

Please prepare and format the manuscript according to the guidelines below and submit it via the submission system. The topic of the manuscript should fit the journal’s scope. The manuscript must not be under review, accepted for publication, or published elsewhere. Please consider the criteria of the double-blind peer review.

Length

We welcome articles of various lengths but usually around 30,000 characters (incl. figures, tables and appendices, excl. references). Shorter manuscripts are welcome. Supporting material which is not essential for the main text can be made available as online-only content.

File Format

Manuscripts should be submitted either in the Microsoft DOCX- format (please do not submit DOC-files), or in the free ODT-format (e.g. LibreOffice). Do not submit PDFs.

Files to be submitted

Please note that due to the peer review process, you must submit the title page and the text of your manuscript in two separate files. Please name the title page with "title page" and the blinded  manuscript text with "blinded manuscript". If you use additional material such as pictures, tables, etc., please also submit this in separate files.  When uploading your manuscript you will find the categories accordingly:

  • title page
  • blinded manuscript
  • other

No personal identifiers

Every effort should be taken to prevent authors and reviewers from identifying each othe. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review). With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file, by following this path: File > Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.

Main Text

The manuscript should be formatted as plain as possible, for example use 1.5 line-spacing, 12 pt. font. The authors may use italics but no underlining (with the exception of URLs). All illustrations, figures and tables should be placed at an appropriate position in the text.

Footnotes are not provided. Important information should be given in the main text. Information of minor importance should not be given at all.

Figures and Tables

Figures and tables should be numbered consecutively in the text as Figure 1, Figure 2, Table 1, Table 2 etc. They should be titled properly. Please include figures and tables at the correct location in the main document for peer review. Make sure that the references regarding figures and tables in the text are correct. When a manuscript is accepted for publication in the journal, images should be supplied as separate files with a resolution of at least 300 dpi (dots per inch). For tables and simple diagrams and charts, the version generated in MS Office or LibreOffice / OpenOffice suffices. Line art should be submitted as vector-based, separate .eps files with a resolution of 600 dpi. It is important that space markers for overviews, tables and graphical material in the text are numbered accordingly and that the numbers and titles are identical in the non-textual files. Figures and tables can be submitted in colour.

Page Numbering

All pages of the manuscript should be numbered consecutively.

Structure of the Blinded Manuscript

The text should be structured as follows:

Introduction

This should cover the main research question and the motives for that question. This section should be succinct, with no subheadings.

Main Body of Manuscript

The main body of a manuscript should include the main components of the research, including theoretical framework, methodology, data, and analyses, etc.. It should contain sufficient details, so that all procedures can be followed and, if possible, repeated. It can be divided into subsections if necessary.

Again: make sure that all possible identifiers to the author have been removed, including the data from the document’s properties.

Citation and reference guidelines

Upon acceptance, authors need to supply their citations and their references according to the APA-style.

Title Page

Please prepare a separate title page, containing the title, all authors and their affiliation(s) as well as their contact details.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments should be placed on the title page and must include a note on possible conflicts of interest as well as a statement about the availability of data and code used in the manusucript.

Title

Please provide a clear and concise title for your manuscript.

Abstract and key words

The title page should include an abstract in which the main question, the method used, and the main findings and conclusions are presented in a concise manner. The abstract should be self-contained and citation-free and should not exceed 200 words. Please include 3-6 key words.

Upon acceptance, authors need to supply the title, abstract and key words of the article also in German.

Revisions

If a revision of the submitted manuscript is necessary, please upload a cover letter describing how you responded to the reviewers' suggestions in parallel with the revised manuscript.

Privacy Statement

The data collected from registered and non-registered users of this journal falls within the scope of the standard operating of peer-reviewed journals. It includes information that makes communication possible for the editorial process; it is used to inform readers about the authorship and editing of content; it enables collecting aggregated data on readership behavior, as well as tracking geopolitical and social elements of scholarly communication.

This journal’s editorial board uses this data to guide its work in publishing and improving this journal. Data that will assist in developing this publishing platform may be shared with its developer Public Knowledge Project (PKP) in an anonymized and aggregated form, with appropriate exceptions such as article metrics. The data will neither be sold by this journal or PKP nor will it be used for purposes other than those stated here. The authors are responsible for the human subject data of all figures that are reported in the articles that are published in this journal.

Those involved in editing this journal seek to be compliant with industry standards for data privacy, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provision for "data subject rights" that include (a) breach notification; (b) right of access; (c) the right to be forgotten; (d) data portability; and (e) privacy by design. The GDPR also allows for the recognition of “the public interest in the availability of the data,” which has a particular aliency for those involved in maintaining, with the greatest integrity possible, the public record of scholarly publishing.

Data Privacy Statement, University Bamberg