About Digital Medievalist
Outline
Top of pageDigital Medievalist Journal (DMJ) is a platinum-open-access, peer-reviewed venue dedicated to every facet of digital scholarship on the Middle Ages. Founded in 2005 as “the most formal part” of the wider Digital Medievalist community, the journal has evolved in step with the field: from its pioneering beginnings at the University of Lethbridge (2005-2017), through a period of professionalization on the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) platform (2017-2025), to its relaunch on OpenEdition Journals (2026).
The journal publishes a wide range of scholarly work, including original research, theoretical articles, notes on technology, commentary pieces, bibliographic and review articles, tutorials, and project reports. It also commissions reviews of books and major electronic sites and projects. All contributions undergo peer review by authorities in humanities computing before publication. Submissions should be of interest to medievalists working with digital media, although they do not need to be exclusively medieval in focus.
Increasingly, the Digital Medievalist community fosters interdisciplinary approaches and projects, including collaborations with computer scientists, which opens up new opportunities for research and innovation in the field.
Aims & Scope
DMJ welcomes:
-
original research articles, method papers, and technical notes
-
commentary pieces on developments in the field
-
tutorials, project reports, and platform, data-set, or tool reviews
-
bibliographic essays and historiographical reflections
Submissions must engage critically with digital approaches to medieval sources but need not be exclusively medieval in focus.
Publication Model
-
Continuous publication: articles appear online as soon as they clear production, aggregated annually into a single volume.
-
Thematic issue: one guest-edited thematic issue per year, plus ad-hoc curated collections.
-
Special collections: one guest-edited thematic issue per year plus ad-hoc curated collections.
-
Diamond OA: no author fees. Content is released under CC BY by default, with CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC and CC BY-NC-SA options available where necessary.
-
Archiving & indexing: CLOCKSS/LOCKSS, Portico and OAI-PMH harvesting guarantee permanence, while major services (DOAJ, Google Scholar, OpenAIRE, etc.) provide discoverability.
Peer-Review & Research Integrity
DMJ operates a modified single-blind process: reviewers remain anonymous unless they recommend acceptance, in which case they are credited as “recommending referees” in the colophon – a tradition that foregrounds expert approval while preserving impartial critique. Articles are screened through Crossref’s Similarity Check before review, and the journal follows the OLH/COPE guidelines on publication ethics, competing interests and malpractice.
Editorial Organisation
A volunteer Editorial Board oversees the journal. Its members are appointed by the Executive Board of the Digital Medievalist community, primarily from the present and former members of the Executive Board, but also from the international Digital Medievalist community. Besides the Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor, specialized Associate Editors are responsible for their respective domains.
Workflows on OpenEdition
-
Submission & review: managed in PKP OJS 3, with custom review forms and section editors. OJS is used strictly for workflow; final publication will appear in the OpenEdition XML-TEI environment, optimised for multi-format outputs (HTML, PDF, ePub) and rich machine-actionable metadata.
-
Metadata sharing: records served via OpenEdition’s OAI-PMH hub (https://metadata.openedition.org/oai) to feed global aggregators and library knowledge bases.
Legacy & Community Roots
DMJ inherits two decades of innovation: the inaugural 2005 issue combined digital palaeography, electronic editing and accessibility studies; later volumes featured landmark themed issues on Digital Classics (2008), teaching the digital Middle Ages (2011) and the Canterbury Tales Project (2021). Its peer-review model, emphasis on early-career mentorship and close linkage to the DM mailing list, conference sessions and postgraduate committee have fostered a vibrant, self-reflexive scholarly network.

