instructions for authors – hortus semioticus

Reading Time: 5 minutes

1. General

1.1.  Hortus Semioticus  publishes original research papers, review articles and book reviews on semiotics.

1.2. Contributions should be in Estonian or English. The language editing of the manuscript (either Estonian or English) is the responsibility of the author. British English is preferred.

1.3. Manuscript should be sent by e-mail to the following address:
hortus.semioticus@ut.ee

1.4. The manuscript should be in RTF (Rich Text Format) or DOCX format.

1.5. Figures should be sent in separate files. In case you have special figures or characters in your manuscript, it is recommended that you send a PDF version as well.

1.6. The first page of the article should be composed of the following:

(a) an accurate indication of the author’s affiliation, and E-mail address
(b) an abstract (150-200 words) in English and Estonian
(c) keywords in English and Estonian (3-7)

1.7.  Recommended length of the article is up to 15 pages or 27000 characters with spaces.

2. Copyrights and Plagiarism

The subject of copyright is the responsibility of the author. If in doubt, it is always advisable to investigate further on the clauses, limitations and exceptions, and the matter of fair use. Contact official organisations, like World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Riigi Teataja to learn more about the Estonian legislation (copyright act, article 19). Finally, on special occasions a direct request for permission of usage from the rightful owner might be necessary.

Hortus Semioticus has a strict policy regarding plagiarism. Manuscripts submitted must be the original work of the author and all quotations and figures should be cited according to guidelines. In case of suspicion of plagiarism we maintain our right to retract the article.

3. The Manuscript

3.1. Text

(a) No special formatting should be used. The text should comply to the following:

Line spacing: 1,5
Font size: 12
Font: Times New Roman

Tab stops or ruler function should be used for indents; field functions and special styles are not accepted.

(b) Articles should be subdivided, where appropriate. Do not use more than three levels of division. If needed, use Arabic numerals to indicate divisions. Numerals should not be placed at the margin. All titles are lowercase.

(d) Foreign words should be in Italics (instead of underline or bold), for example, langue, parole etc., Abbrevated technical terms like e.g., i.e., ibid. are excepted.

(e) Acknowledgements to individuals and grants should be included at the end of the text before references and not in footnotes. Personal acknowledgements should precede those of institutions or agencies. The names of the organisations should appear in full.

3.2. Tables and figures

(a) All tables and figures should be accompanied by captions and sent in separate files. If a special layout is used, it is recommendable to include a PDF version of the manuscript.

(b) Comments may be added after the title of a table or figure to specify some details. If the table or figure is copied from a source, then the reference should be added to the caption. If the table or figure depicts a modified original, then the original source should be referred to (e.g., adapted from Nöth 2018: 25).

[…] according to Peirce’s triadic sign model (Fig. 1).

3.3. Citations

(a) All the quotations should follow the original exactly. Omitted passages should be indicated by […]

(b) Author’s interpolations should be enclosed in square brackets: [ ] (not / /).

(c) If there are several references to one and the same source within one paragraph following each other, it may be marked as: (ibid, 10).

(d) Long quotations (of more than 3 lines) should be written as a separate paragraph in a smaller font (10) with single line spacing, without quotation marks, and with indentation.

(e) Author-date citations should generally be given within parentheses. For instance:

Winner (1995: 259) has shown…
[…] as has been shown already (Winner 1995: 259).

In case of two authors:

[…] as has been demonstrated before (Lotman, Uspenskij 1978: 213).

Three or more authors:

[…] as has been suggested earlier (Uspenskij et al. 2003).

(f) If there are two authors with the same family name, use the initial letter of the first name in the citation:

[…] about the semioshpere (Lotman, J. 2005).
[…] in the verse (Lotman, M. 2008).

(g) The inline references should always use the year number of the edition used for quoting. If it is absolutely necessary to include the publication year of the original edition, use square brackets:

[…] as shown in their Thesis (Uspenskij et al. 2003[1973]).
[…] about the dominant (Jakobson 1981[1935]).

(h) If there are several references in the same brackets, they should be separated by semicolon:

[…] as has been demonstrated by many earlier works (Lotman 2001, 2005; Torop 2005; Kull 2005)

(i) If the source text is anonymous (such as guidelines, laws, ordinances etc.), then the title of the document must be referred to, or the reference should start with the first words of the source text.

(j) Referring to an encyclopedia or dictionary, the title or abbreviation of the source text is mentioned, then the year of publication and sub (which refers to the word/term referred to from the dictionary). The word or term itself should be given in bold.

3.4. Reference list

(a) Reference list should include all the works cited or referred to in the text. Works not referred to should not be included.

(b) Self-references to the author of the manuscript should not exceed 15% of the whole reference list.

(c) If possible, the author should refer to the original works directly and not via third authors. For example: as (Lotman 1990) and not: (Lotman 1990 cited in Torop 2005). Exceptions can be made for rare or old manuscripts and works written in rare languages.

(d) If the place of publication is unknown, it should be marked as s.l. (sine loco ‘without place’). If there is more than one place of publication, then only up to three should be marked and then “etc.” added.

(e) If the year of publication is unknown, it should be indicated as s.a. (sine anno ‘without year’).

(f) The reference list should be alphabetic, using the formats as shown below:

Book and journal titles are in italics and capitalised in headline style. Article titles are in lowercase.
Arabic numerals are used for volume and series numbering.
Authors’ names should preferentially appear in full.
Cyrillic titles can be both in Cyrillic or Latinised form.

Books:

Deacon, Terrence 1998.  The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Human Brain. London: Penguin Books.

Lotman, Yuri M. 1990.  Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. London: I. B. Tauris.

Krampen, Martin; Oehler, Klaus; Posner, Roland; Sebeok, Thomas A.; Uexküll, Thure von (eds.) 1987.  Classics of Semiotics. New York: Plenum Press.

Articles:

Baer, Eugen 1984. How do reflexive systems communicate? In: Pelc, Jerzy; Sebeok, Thomas A.; Stankiewicz, Edward; Winner, Thomas G. (eds.),  Sign, System and Function: Papers of the First and Second Polish-American Semiotics Colloquia. (Approaches to Semiotics 67.) Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1–11.

Krampen, Martin 1997. Models of semiosis. In: Posner, Roland; Robering, Klaus; Sebeok, Thomas A. (eds.), Semiotics: A Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic Foundations of Nature and Culture, vol. 1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 247–287.

Nöth, Winfried 1998. Ecosemiotics.  Sign Systems Studies  26: 332–343

Stigler, Lis 1981. Sociolingvistik i Sovjetunionen.  Svantevit  7(2): 5–20.

Winner, Thomas G. 1995. Prague structuralism and semiotics: Neglect and resulting fallacies.  Semiotica  105(3/4): 243–275.

Jakobson, Roman 1981[1935]. The dominant.  Selected Writings III. Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry. The Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton Publishers, 751–756.

Lotman, Yuri 1990. The symbol in the cultural system.  Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. London & New York: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd.

CP = Peirce, Charles S. 1931–1958.  Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [Hartshorne, Charles; Weiss, Paul (eds.), 1931–1935; vols. 7–8. Burks, A. W. (ed.) 1958; In-text references are to CP, followed by volume and paragraph numbers]

MS = Peirce, Charles Sanders. Unpublished manuscripts. Copies from Peirce Edition Project of Indiana University — Purdue University, Indianapolis. [In-text references are to MS, followed by manuscript number and page numbers]

Electronic Sources:

The same rules apply when listing electronic sources, but in addition the Web address and time of retrieval are noted. For example:

Glaude, Benoît 2013. The experience of intersemiotic citation in Blutch’s Total Jazz. Image & Narrative 14(4): 1–19. Retrieved from: http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/156200, 18.07.2018.

Meier-Oeser, Stephan 2011. Medieval Semiotics. In: Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/semiotics-medieval/, 18.07.2018.

Entries of an online reference with no author or editor should be listed in the following way:

Semiotics (s.a.). In: Oxford Living Dictionaries. Retrieved from: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/semiotics, 18.07.2018.

Films:

Should be listed according to the following scheme: Director’s Last Name, First Name (director) Year. Title of Film [Film]. Country of Origin: Studio(s).

Annaud, Jean-Jacques (director) 1986. The Name of the Rose. Italy, France, West Germany: Cristaldifilm, Les Films Ariane, Neue Constantin Film.

4. Reviewing

All manuscripts are reviewed by the editorial team (at least two editors), however, only those that match the goals of Hortus Semioticus will proceed for further review.