Policy statement

TRAMES

A Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences

founded in 1997,
formerly as

Acta et Commentationes
Universitatis Tartuensis
(Dorpatensis) B
Established 1893
           and           

Proceedings of the Estonian
Academy of Sciences
Humanities aond Social Sciences
Establisehd 1952

I Editorial Policy

1. TRAMES is the only fully-refereed, internationally abstracted, English-language scholarly journal in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Estonia. It is open to authors from any country or any scientific school.

2. TRAMES publishes papers from a wide range of the humanities and social sciences with preference to papers with broader theoretical attitude and a possible interdisciplinary approach. Besides this, TRAMES will be open to guest editors for theme issues which concentrate on particular topics or schools of scientific thought.

3. TRAMES is strictly refereed. The only criteria for acceptance of papers will be the originality of ideas, weight of arguments and clarity of presentation. The main principle of the editorial policy will be open-mindedness and tolerance for the heterogeneity of ideas. Each submitted paper is reviewed by two anonymous referees agreed upon by the editors. A double positive result will mean acceptance, a double negative rejection, and mixed response the involvement of a third referee, whose vote will be final.

4. TRAMES is an English-language journal. However, occasionally essays are accepted in German or French, especially - particularly in the case of German - in those disciplines in which English is not the primary language of international communication.

5. The journal will be published four times a year (spring, summer, fall, winter), each issue comprising of about 100 pages.

II Structure

6. TRAMES is so structured that there are
a) an Editorial Board, headed by a Chairman,
b) 4 Editors, including an Editor-in-Chief, and
c) a Managing Editor in charge of production.

7. The Editorial Board consists of 20 members.
a) Half of these members should come from Estonia, half from abroad. In cases of ambiguity, these differentiations can be handled flexibly.
b) The Chairman of the Editorial Board is the President of the Estonian Academy of Sciences ex officio. Vice Chairman is the Rector of the University of Tartu ex officio.
c) It should be taken care that the members of the board represent as many disciplines potentially covered by TRAMES as possible.
d) Appointment to the TRAMES Editorial Board is for five years.
e) Members should be in strong sympathy with the TRAMES philosophy and clear about their tasks and necessary involvement.
f) Duties of the members of the editorial board are
- refereeing whenever possible;
- involving other colleagues as referees;
- transmitting new authors into TRAMES and representing the journal;
- preferably publishing at least one article book review within two years in TRAMES;
- annual review of the report and activities of TRAMES, ideally in the context of an annual physical meeting.

8. There are four Editors, of which one is the Editor-in-Chief.
a) The Editors run the business of TRAMES.
b) The Editors decide on acceptance, reviews, reviewers, guest-editors, etc. They decide with majority; in the case of even split, the Editor-in-Chief has a breaking vote.

9. As Managing Editor, Tiina Randviir (Estonian Institute) will run the practical matters connected with publication of Trames. She also edits the manuscripts prior to publishing for correct English.

10. The nomination of members of the Editorial Board and of the editors is approved by the decision-making bodies of the Estonian Academy and the University of Tartu.

III Publication

11. In order to ensure on-time publication, referees are asked to submit their reports within one month from the receipt of the manuscript. If they do not meet this, immediately other referees are asked. It is up to the editor-in-chief to ask occasionally more than two referees; in this case, the first two arriving reports count.

12. Every other issue of TRAMES should be a guest-edited one, which however - especially in the case of conference proceedings - must be fully refereed also, either convincingly by the guest editors, or by TRAMES itself.

Urmas Sutrop, Editor-in-Chief
Jüri Allik, Editor
Wolfgang Drechsler, Editor
Martin Ehala, Editor

Tallinn - Tartu, 11.10.2004


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