Author guidelines

[Version: February 2026]

Important information: Submissions that do not meet the author guidelines may be rejected according to the journal's review process.

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General information

Ethnoscripts is an open-access online medium. In order to publish your contribution, we need your written consent. You will receive an e-mail with a “contract for authorship”, which you please fill out and return according to the instructions.
All published articles in this journal are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 4.0 International. The authors accept a potential publication under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license when submitting their articles.
It is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain all necessary copyright permissions for the use of third party materials (such as images, graphics, etc.) in their publications.
When using images, graphics, etc., captions are required that explicitly refer to the authorship (e.g. naming oneself, a third party, Creative Commons license, etc.).
We need an abstract of your text as part of the first submission.
The language of articles can be English or German. Attention must be paid to correct spelling and grammar.
If you are not a native speaker of either British or American English, we kindly ask you to have your contribution professionally proofread to make sure the level of English is suitable for publication.

Length of contributions for the Special Issue: a maximum of 8000 words.
Length of Think Pieces: 1000-1500 words.
Length of other contributions, e.g. Sparks, reviews, obituaries: 800 words.
Please use the Harvard Citation Style for references in the text and use the characters and spaces according to the following examples.

Examples for references in the text:

Two authors: (Author and Author Year of Publication: Pages)
Example: (Marcus and Fischer 1986: 12-16)

Three or more authors: (First Author et al. Year of Publication: Pages)
Example: (Glick Schiller et al. 1995: 49-50)

Please ensure that all sources quoted or paraphrased in the text (including footnotes) appear in the bibliography.
In the bibliography, all authors and editors should be mentioned with their first and last names (so instead of “et al.” please write full names).
The authors’ or editors’ first names should be written out (exception: authors who generally specify their first names with initials).
In the case of contributions in English, all data are given in English regardless of the language of the quoted work; for German-language contributions, all details are given in German. Thus, in the case of English-language contributions please use in all references (ed.) or (eds.) for editor or editors, p. or pp. for the indication of the page numbers, etc. and in the case of German-language contributions corresponding (Hg.) or S., etc.

Examples of references in the bibliography

Book (one author)
Surname, First Name (Year of Publication) Title. Place: Publisher.
Example: Hannerz, Ulf (1980) Exploring the City. Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press.

Book (two authors)
Surname, First Name and First Name Surname (Year of Publication) Title. Place: Publisher.
Example: Eriksen, Thomas Hylland and Finn Sivert Nielsen (2001) A History of Anthropology. London: Pluto Press.

Book (three or more authors)
Surname, First Name, First Name Surname and First Name Surname (Year of Publication) Title. Place: Publisher.
Example: Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller and Christina Szanton Blanc (1994) Nations Unbound. Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.

Articles in edited volumes
Surname, First Name (Year of Publication) Title. In: Surname, First Name (ed.) Title. Place: Publisher: pp. Page Numbers.
Example: Schirmer, Jennifer (1997) Universal and Sustainable Human Rights? Special Tribunals in Guatemala. In: Wilson, Richard A. (ed.) Human Rights, Culture and Context. Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press: pp. 161-186.

Edited volume
Surname, First Name (ed.) (Year of Publication) Title. Place: Publisher.
Example: Barth, Fredrik (ed.) (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
Note: In case of more than one editor please proceed just as in the case of “book (two authors)” or “book (three or more authors)”.

Articles in journals
Surname, First Name (Year of Publication) Title. Title of the Journal Edition Volume (No.): pp. Page Numbers.
Example: Safran, William (1991) Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return. Diaspora 1 (1): pp. 83-99.

Electronic sources
Surname, First Name (Year of Publication) Title. URL [accessed Day Month Year]
Example: Latour, Bruno (2011) Waiting for Gaia. Composing the Common World through Arts and Politics. A Lecture at the French Institute. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/ default/files/124-GAIA-LONDON-SPEAP_0.pdf [accessed: 3 February 2026].
Note: If the author is not known please quote the editor of the web page or if necessary the title.

For publications in the publishing process: (in print) instead of the year of publication.
For publications without an indication of the year of publication: (no date).
For publications without indication of place of publication: no place of publication given.
For unpublished sources (for example, university thesis) please state this instead of the publisher’s entry, e.g.: unpublished master thesis.
If one author has published more than one title within the same year, please add a, b, c to the year of publication to both references in the text and bibliography to clearly identify the title.
For publications published in new editions, please cite the used edition in the text and insert in square brackets in the bibliography the first publication year and, if applicable, further information on the first edition. Example: Malinowski, Bronislaw (1964) [1944] A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press.