Editorial Model

The Diaspora Portal is an international and interdisciplinary collaborative effort. The Moses Mendelssohn Center in Potsdam is responsible for the editorial oversight and coordination as well as the technical implementation. However, the project is largely co-created by the currently more than 100 authors of contributions in various genres. They come from more than 20 countries, with journalists, writers and academics contributing case studies. In the long term, the Diaspora Portal is also intended to become a place for international, interdisciplinary and collaborative networking. Imagined as a 'Diaspora Tree', we want to bring together different memory institutions in the respective countries of immigration in order to make their work and collections visible and to link them with each other in a targeted way.

The authors of the country surveys work with the editors to review the biographies and source presentations to be included in their country section. The guidelines were discussed and debated at several digital kick-off meetings, which also served as networking events.

In addition to this two-stage review process, external reviewers were also asked to review individual articles, depending on their expertise. This multi-stage review process and the close collaboration between editors and authors ensure the high quality of all contributions.

The editorial team at the MMZ is responsible for coordinating the project. It also checks the legal aspects of the publications and monitors the entire process.

Editorial Guidelines

The various text genres of this portal follow a standardized scheme: A brief summary at the beginning lists the most important aspects of a country, person or source in relation to the German-Jewish diaspora. In all texts, names of persons and organizations as well as place names are linked to standard data records. This creates a comprehensive index both within the portal and links to other digital projects. Metadata records have been created for all sources. We also provide a transcription for sources reproduced as digital facsimiles and a translation of the respective source for foreign-language texts. This makes it easier to read handwritten texts, for example, and also makes the sources searchable.

Metadata records have been created for the XML transcripts in the online version, and all historical documents are provided with metadata.

In addition, all texts offer a small selected bibliography and further resources at the end. The latter include links to other digital content (articles, online exhibitions, digital copies, podcasts, films, etc.).

The transcriptions were created by the editorial team as faithfully as possible to the original. This includes preserving most of the original punctuation and spelling. Spelling mistakes and abbreviations have been corrected. Any ambiguities are explained in the notes. Emphasis and deletions are left visible, especially if they have a substantive meaning.

The original language of the country surveys, biographies, and source interpretations is German or English. In the case of English-language contributions, we have followed the spelling of the respective authors (American or British English).

Both the user interface and the content of the portal are intended to be bilingual (English and German) throughout. Translations that are currently missing are being worked on and will be added gradually.