This issue

Welcome to the first issue of the 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.

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.

Beginning with the second issue (DM 1.2, fall 2005), we also will publish reviews of electronic publications, tools, and projects.

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.

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 () for day-to-day collaboration, a wiki () to encourage the communal development of best-practice standards, and a news server () 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.

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.

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.

Forthcoming issues

For 2005 and 2006, DM will be published semi-annually: fall 2005 (late November), spring 2006 (late March), and fall 2006 (late November). The spring 2006 issue will feature articles from the summer 2005 conference season; the fall 2006 issue will focus on pioneering digital projects and the early history of humanities computing by medievalists. The fall 2005 issue has no set theme, but will contain a number of publications from the summer 2004 conference season. Confirmed contributors to these forthcoming issues include:

Peter Baker (University of Virginia) on digital standards Patrick Conner (West Virginia University Press) on early digital applications Matthew James Driscoll (University of Copenhagen) on new encoding guidelines for manuscript information Roy Liuzza (University of Tennessee) on bibliographic standards and the new on-line

Submission guidelines

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.

Authors considering submitting in TEI P4 are asked to contact the editors for an encoding guide.

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.