Instructions for Authors

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SCOPE

Studia Theologica Transsylvaniensia (StThTr) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that publishes original research articles, previously unpublished sources, and critical reviews in biblical studies, church history, systematic theology, practical theology, and related fields within theology and religious studies (e.g., philosophy, literature, and history).

PUBLICATION ETHICS

All manuscripts published in StThTr are expected to comply with the highest standards of publication ethics. These standards apply to everyone involved in the publishing process—authors, editors, and reviewers. All contributors are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the Journal’s publication ethics policy, available here: https://stthtr.com/home/ethics.

SUBMISSION PROCESS

Manuscripts for StThTr must be submitted online at https://stthtr.com/home/about/submissions. The submitting author—typically the corresponding author—is responsible for the manuscript throughout the submission and peer-review process. The submitting author must ensure that all eligible co-authors are included in the author list and that each co-author has read and approved the version submitted.

To submit a manuscript, first-time users should register at https://stthtr.com/home/user/register and then log in at https://stthtr.com/home/login. Before submitting, authors are encouraged to consult the “Instructions for Authors,” available at https://stthtr.com/home/instructions-for-authors. During online submission, the system will guide you step by step through the submission requirements, uploading the manuscript for review, and entering the required metadata (author details, title, abstract, keywords).

FORMAL REQUIREMENTS

File format: Please submit the manuscript for review as a single Microsoft Word (.docx) file.

Language: Submissions may be written in Hungarian or English. If the manuscript is written in a language other than the author’s native language, it should be proofread by a professional language editor before submission.

Length: Research articles should not exceed 8,000 words. Reviews should not exceed 3,000 words.

Fonts and spacing:

• Main text: Times New Roman, 12 pt, 1.15 line spacing
• Footnotes: Times New Roman, 10 pt, 1.15 line spacing
• Non-Latin scripts (Hebrew or Greek): Please use Unicode-compliant fonts. Where appropriate, authors may instead provide a phonetic transliteration in italics.

Emphasis: Within the running text, bold, underlining, and letter-spacing for emphasis are not permitted. Bold type may be used only for highlighting the title and subheadings.

Quotations, foreign terms, and words or phrases requiring emphasis should be set in italics.

Internal heading system: The heading system must consistently reflect the logical structure of the text. This can be achieved by clearly defining heading levels. The following heading levels are used:

• FIRST LEVEL HEADING
• SECOND LEVEL HEADING
• Third Level Heading

Quotation style: Use quotation marks to indicate quotations. At the beginning of a quotation use the opening quotation mark (“), and at the end use the closing quotation mark (”). Quotations longer than three lines should be set off after a line break (Enter), italicized, and placed in quotation marks within the text.

MANUSCRIPT STRUCTURE

Research articles should include:

• Front matter: Title; Author name(s); Affiliation(s); Abstract; Keywords
• Main text: e.g., Introduction; Method; Presentation of Results; Conclusions
• Back matter: Funding (if applicable); Acknowledgments (if applicable); Conflicts of Interest (if applicable); Reference List

Reviews should include:

• Front matter: Title; Author name(s); Affiliation(s); full bibliographic details of the work under review (author/editor, title, place of publication, year, publisher, ISBN, total number of pages)
• Main text: Presentation and critical assessment of the reviewed work
• Back matter: Funding (if applicable); Acknowledgments (if applicable); Conflicts of Interest (if applicable); Reference List (if other literature is cited in addition to the work under review)

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

Front Matter

• Title: The title should be concise, specific, and relevant.
• Author(s) and affiliation(s): Provide each author’s full name (first name and surname). For each affiliation, include the institution name and address details, including city and country.
• Abstract (in English): The abstract should be a single paragraph of up to 200 words. It should briefly cover: 1) the context and purpose of the study; 2) the main approach, sources, or procedures; 3) the principal findings or arguments; 4) the main conclusions or implications.
• Keywords (in English): List three to eight keywords, separated by semicolons. Keywords should be specific to the article and clearly indicate the topics it addresses.

Main Text

• Introduction: The introduction should place the study in a broader context and explain its significance. It should state the purpose of the work, briefly review the current state of research with key references, and note major debates or divergent interpretations when necessary.
• Method: Describe the methodology with sufficient detail to allow others to understand and evaluate, the approach of the study.
• Presentation and Discussion of Results: Report the findings and interpret their significance in relation to the research question and previous studies.
• Conclusions: Summarize the main findings and their significance, note any limitations where appropriate, and indicate directions for further research.

Back Matter

• Funding (if applicable): Disclose all sources of funding. Please specify any grants that supported the research and indicate whether you received funding to cover publication costs.
• Acknowledgments (if applicable): Acknowledge any assistance or support not covered under authorship or funding. Where applicable, authors must also disclose in this section how Generative AI tools were used in preparing the manuscript. Routine language editing (grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting) does not need to be declared.
• Conflicts of Interest (if applicable): Authors must disclose any personal, professional, or financial interests that could be perceived as influencing the presentation or interpretation of the research.
• Reference List: List all sources cited in the manuscript in alphabetical order by the authors’ surnames. Each work should be listed once in the reference list at the end of the manuscript.

STYLE GUIDE FOR FOOTNOTES AND REFERENCE LIST

Footnotes

• Please provide all references and source citations in footnotes (do not use endnotes or in-text citations). The only exception is Bible quotations and references, whose source citations should appear in the main text. Footnote numbers should appear immediately after the word or passage to which they refer. Footnotes follow punctuation (e.g., commas and periods).
• In footnotes, references should be given in the author–date format. An author–date citation consists of the author’s surname and the year of publication of the cited work. When referring to a specific passage, give the page number after a colon (:) following the year. Use only a single space between the author’s name and the year, with no punctuation. When citing a range of consecutive pages, separate the first and last page numbers with an en dash (–). Additions such as ed. or trans. are not used in this system. For works with two authors, the surnames are joined by “&”; for works with three authors, the surnames are separated by commas, with “&” before the final name. Within a single footnote, multiple citations are separated by semicolons (;).

Examples:

¹ Greshake 1997.

² Sáry 2023: 23–50.

³ Kratz 1999; Erdő 2023: 139–150.

⁴ King & Stager 2001: 22–25, 46–50.

⁵ Evans, Lohr & Petersen 2001: 22–25, 46–50.

If a footnote contains explanatory text, references may be integrated into the sentence as follows:

⁶ Kratz (1999: 591) and King & Stager (2001: 47) note that …

Reference List

• Provide a Reference List at the end of the manuscript, including all works cited in the footnotes. Ensure full correspondence between footnotes and the Reference List: every source cited in the notes must appear in the list, and every item in the list must be cited in the footnotes.
• Arrange entries alphabetically by authors’ surnames. For multiple works by the same author, list items chronologically (oldest to newest). Distinguish works published in the same year with a, b, c, etc. If a cited work has a DOI, it must be included in the Reference List.
• The StThTr follows the basic principles of the Chicago Author–Date system. For the bibliography, this style has been adapted into a language-neutral format that can be used across different languages—avoiding language-specific conventions (e.g., language-specific quotation marks) and omitting inserted explanatory wording (e.g., “edited by, translated by”).

Examples

Books (one, two, or three authors/editors)