Preparing the final version of your manuscript

The final version of your article has to be submitted as a LaTeX document using the DH Benelux Journal template. For authors unfamiliar with this format we offer support in preparing their final versions. Please carefully read the instructions below on how to prepare your manuscript, but don’t hesitate to contact the editors to ask for guidance and help. Authors can submit their final manuscripts via email to the journal address.

Authors who have written their articles in Word can convert their .docx files to LaTeX using e.g. Pandoc: (https://pandoc.org/), which saves a lot of work. The bulk of the work that remains is  creating the bibliography in bibtex format, adding proper labels to tables and figures and proper references in the running text. If you want help with basic conversion from .docx to markdown/LaTeX, contact the journal editors.

Preparing a manuscript in LaTeX

Writing your manuscript in LaTeX requires some software to turn your source text into a print version that reads nicely and has hyperlinks for navigating  through the article. There are various software packages that can do this for you. Perhaps the easiest way is to use Overleaf, which is a free online and in-browser application in which you can write your manuscript, but we list other options below as well.

For manuscripts in LaTeX, please use the DH-Benelux-Journal-Template. We encourage authors not familiar with LaTeX to use the Overleaf platform (see below) to prepare their manuscript, as it is a more user-friendly environment with plenty of documentation and help pages, and it is easier for the journal editors to help out if you get stuck.

Producing a manuscript in LaTeX with Overleaf

A handy online application for producing a LaTeX version of your manuscript is Overleaf (https://overleaf.com). It provides an easy-to-use environment that has all the basic conversion software installed and allows you to generate a PDF of your latex files and it provides helpful error messages to identify issues with the formatting.

Note that this is a commercial application, and may at any point become a subscription-only service or go offline.

An example article is provided on Overleaf: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/dh-benelux-journal-template/rcbfddyvmvpk. Overleaf also provides excellent documentation, including for how to use LaTeX: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Main_Page

Software

There are several open source software packages for different platforms (e.g. Windows, Mac, Linux, see https://www.latex-project.org/get/#tex-distributions) that you can use to create a LaTex version of your manuscript. These packages use syntax highlighting to make your files more readable, and allow you to check your files for errors. They can also transform the LaTeX sources into PDF and other file formats.

LaTeX documentation

LaTeX project documentation: https://www.latex-project.org/help/documentation/
Wikibooks LaTeX documentation: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
Overleaf documentation (including LaTeX): https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Main_Page

Article format

Authors should use the dhbenelux class. That is, your main tex file should start with the following line:

\documentclass{dhbenelux}

The dhbenelux.cls file will ensure that your article adheres to the journal style. The Overleaf template alread has this .cls file in the right place. If you are using software on your computer locally, download the journal latex template from Overleaf and unzip so you have both the template dhbenelux.cls file and the main.tex document in which to write your article.

Preamble

Check the DH Benelux class template before adding packages and only add packages when they are necessary to communicate clearly.

Insert the title and author information using

\maketitle

All articles should include a copyright statement. After you’ve inserted \maketitle add the following:

\copyrightstatement

Articles should start with a short abstract of 200-300 words. The abstract should be placed in the abstract environment, not using \abstract{}, but using the begin-end construct, i.e.:

\begin{abstract}
Your abstract text
\end{abstract}

Sections and subsections

Sections and subsections should start with a header. Please use consistent capitalization.
To create a section with a heading, use \section{}:

\section{Introduction}
In this paper we report ...

\section{Experiments}
We conducted a number of experiments ...

\subsection{Experimental Results}
The results of the first experiment ...

\subsubsection{Analysis of Results}
To better understand the results, ...

Anchors for sections

If you refer to sections in your manuscript (e.g. “see Section 2.1”), please use labels and references for those sections, so they are automatically hyperlinked upon conversion to PDF and HTML:

\section{Experimental Results}
\label{sec:results}

... this is described in Section \ref{sec:results}.

Quotes

Short quotes within a sentence should be preceded by two *backticks* and followed by two single quotes (not a single double qoute):

One of the participants stressed that ``we need to develop a data literacy.''

Block quotes should marked as follows:

\begin{quote}
This is a block quote.
\end{quote}

Figures and Tables

Tables and Figures should have hyperlinked references in the running text. Numbers for tables and figures should be generated automatically and not be manually assigned. In other words, don’t use Figure 2 but an explicit latex reference, as in the following examples:

... an example of the scanned images is shown in Figure~\ref{fig:image_scan}.
... the dataset used are listed in Table~\ref{tab:datasets}.

Creating tables in LaTeX can be a frustrating experience. There are online tools that can help you generate tables in LaTeX, e.g.  https://www.tablesgenerator.com/latex_tables.

Bibliography and in-text citations

The reference list/bibliography needs to be provided in bibtex format in a separate file (see below).

Your bibtex file should contain a bibtex entry with that key:

@book{maxwell2013qualitative,
  title = {Qualitative research design: An interactive approach, 3rd edition}, 
  author = {Maxwell, Joseph A}, 
  year = {2013},
  publisher = {Sage publications},
  year = {2013}
}

Note that the bibtex keys in your main text should *exactly* match those in your bibtex file, including the use of upper- and lowercase. We prefer authors to use only lowercase characters for keys.

Also, please do not use any of the following special characters in your bibtex keys: & # @ , \ ( ) % $ ! ? ;

Bibliographic citations in the main text should use bibtex keys and follow the APA style (https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations):

For this we used a model for research design by \citet{maxwell2013qualitative}.

It's also possible to put citations in parentheses \citep{maxwell2013qualitative}, 
or to cite specific pages \citep[p.6]{maxwell2013qualitative} 
or page ranges \citep[pp.6-10]{maxwell2013qualitative}.

You can also cite multiple references, separating the citation keys
with a comma \citep{maxwell2013qualitative,darwin1859origin}.

The latex version above generates the following citation style:

For this we used a model for research design by Maxwell (2013).

It's also possible to put citations in parentheses (Maxwell, 2013), 
or to cite specific pages (Maxwell, 2013, p.6) 
or page ranges (Maxwell, 2013, pp.6-10).

You can also cite multiple references, separating the citation keys
with a comma (Maxwell, 2013; Darwin 1859).

Copyright information

Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. The LaTeX template takes care that the copyright statement is included automatically when the PDF version is generated.

Files to submit

If you prepare your manuscript in LaTeX, you should submit the following files:

  • Latex file(s) with the article text. The main LaTeX file should be called main.tex
  • Bibtex file with bibliographic references (see below for details on how to create this). Name the file references.bib
  • Image files for all the figures, in a subfolder called Images

Create a zip file containing these files and send it via email to the journal address.

Examples

We have provided an example article formatted in LaTeX that you can use as a starting point. It is also available as a project on Overleaf: https://www.overleaf.com/read/qnjgchysjqfh. You can create a free account on Overleaf, then go to that URL and make copy of this project and adapt that copy to your own article. To make a copy, click on the Overleaf menu in the top left and select “Copy Project”.

Preparing the reference list in bibtex format


Your final submission should contain a separate file that contains all references to the literature you cite in .bibtex format. The bibtex file has keys for the individual papers. Use these keys in your article at placeholders in the text. The conversion from markdown or latex will automatically replace them with readable references.

There are various ways to produce a reference list in .bibtex format:

  • Using a reference manager: many reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley or BibDesk can export references to a .bibtex file.
  • Lookup individual references through e.g. Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar and export to bibtex
    • In Google Scholar: locate the bibliographic item in Google Scholar, then click on the quotation symbol. At the bottom of the popup window, select bibtex, then copy-paste to a plain text file.
  • Manually creating bibtex items: Use an online bibtex generator (e.g. https://truben.no/latex/bibtex/) and fill in the metadata for each reference manually. There are templates for specific bibliographic categories (articles, book, chapter, proceedings, miscellaneous, …): https://www.verbosus.com/bibtex-style-examples.html

Please do not use any of the following special characters in your bibtex keys: & # @ , \ ( ) % $ ! ? ;

Submitting your final manuscript

Create a zip file containing these files and send it via email to the journal address.