Editorial Model

The Diaspora portal is a collaborative international and interdisciplinary effort. While editorial oversight and technical development are based at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies (MMZ) in Potsdam, the project is shaped by the initiative of over a hundred authors from more than twenty countries who are contributing their writing in the different categories. The authors of case studies include not only scholars, but also journalists and professional writers. For the long term, the Diaspora platform is envisioned as a platform for international, interdisciplinary, and collaborative exchange. Visualized metaphorically as a ‘tree of the Diaspora,’ it aims to bring together institutions of memory in countries where émigrés lived, making their work and their holdings visible and strategically connecting them.

Authors of the geographical overviews work together with the editorial team to review biographies and source interpretations within their country or region. These collaborative editorial processes were discussed during several digital preliminary meetings, which also served as networking opportunities.

In some cases, on top of these two stages of editorial oversight, additional peer reviewers with relevant expertise checked individual essays. This multi-stage review process and the close collaboration between editors and authors ensure the scholarly quality of all content.

The MMZ editorial team coordinates the project, but also reviews legal aspects of publication and oversees all workflows.

Editorial Guidelines

All text categories in this online portal follow a consistent structure. A short summary at the beginning highlights key aspects of the country, person, or source in relation to the German-Jewish Diaspora. The names of people, institutions, and places are linked to standardized datasets, creating an internal index and connecting the portal to other digital projects. Metadata is compiled for all sources. For sources represented as digital facsimiles, the online portal includes both transcriptions and translations (for texts in other languages). This makes handwritten documents more legible and also allows users to search the text of a source for keywords.

Metadata has also been compiled for the XML transcriptions in the online version, and all historical documents are annotated with metadata.

Also, each article concludes with a short selected bibliography and links to further digital resources, such as articles, online exhibitions, digitized documents, podcasts, and films.

Transcripts have been prepared by the editorial team as faithfully as possible, largely preserving original punctuation and spelling. However, spelling mistakes and abbreviations are annotated for clarity, noting any uncertainties. Emphases and crossed-out text are preserved, especially when relevant to the content.

The geographical overviews, biographies, and source interpretations are originally written in either German or English. Contributions composed in English retain the spelling conventions of their respective authors (either US or UK/Commonwealth English).

The interface and content of the online portal are designed to be fully bilingual (German and English). Any missing translations are currently in progress and will be added on a rolling basis.