Author Guidelines

Guidelines for the author

Author: Hans-Jürgen Schwarz

back to Authors

Last edit: 18.02.2011

General Principles

Introduction

SaltWiki is a community project that aims to create a specialist Wiki of the best possible quality on the subject of "salt damage". The specialist Wiki SaltWiki is aimed at both the specialist audience and interested members of the public, i.e. the target group also includes laypersons. The comprehensibility and clearness that is always required in publications is demanded to a particular extent of contributions to SaltWiki. The following guidelines apply to authors of SaltWiki, which will be improved and amended as required by the Hornemann Institute to conform to jurisdiction and technical innovations:

Author

You can become an author by applying to be an author in SaltWiki, stating the subject area in which you would like to work. In doing so, you make a commitment to abide by the author guidelines. After verification, the applicant receives his/her access data by e-mail from the SaltWiki administrator responsible.

Commitment

Authors guarantee that any contributions will be their own work and that they own the publication rights to the content. Authors are obliged only to use the data/figures/etc. made available to them through access to the repository within the scope of the rights (licences) associated with it.

Quality standards

Authors must adhere to the following standards of quality:

General comprehensibility: Even complicated contexts must be presented in a clear manner, using meaningful illustrations.
Scientifically correct: The subject of an article should be described as completely and comprehensibly as possible. In doing so, the author's own preliminary work and that of others must be proven to be complete and correct (quotations).
Complete metadata: Metadata is a necessary precondition for the documentation of the quality of documents and their ability to be located/researched. They are recorded according to uniform standards when the documents are uploaded and manually supplemented, if necessary. (See http://193.175.110.91/repository/index.php/Spezial:Hochladen)

Basic principles of author's work

Licence: The content of SaltWiki is under licence, which permits further, non-commercial use on the condition that the author is named, and further dissemination under the same conditions (Creative Commons Licence by-nc-sa). Images and embedded files are licensed according to the requirements of the rights holders.

No advertising: SaltWiki is supported by public funds and for this reason is free from commercial advertising.

Fairness when dealing with colleagues: The aim of SaltWiki is to provide up-to-date scientific information. Scientific discussions are welcome but the rules of fairness must always be adhered to.

Workflow

The creation of an article in SaltWiki occurs as follows:

1. Create an article page.
2. Create the first version of an article. If the article is initially created using a word-processing program, it must be transferred into the Mediawiki format and inserted.
3. Check whether suitable images are available in the repository; if not, upload your own illustrations into the repository, equipping them with metadata in doing so (see below).
4. Embed illustrations.
5. Record literature in the bibliography.
6. Create literary references and footnotes.
7. Check the formatting of the article
8. Create links and check any existing links.
9. The article is checked by the editor.
10. The author incorporates in the article any changes proposed by the editor.
11. The article is released for review. Any registered authors can read the article and comment on it on the internal discussion page.
12. Incorporate comments in the article within the scope of a review process.
13. Publication of the article by the editor responsible.

Publication of the article takes place on arrangement with the editors responsible.

Naming of the article

The uniform naming of articles guarantees a mutual interlinking of pages that is simple to implement.

A good overview of nomenclature can be found in Wikipedia .

If there are synonyms for the article title, or if an article embraces several subjects, redirects are created under these titles.

The following apply in general:

• Select the shortest and simplest title possible
• The title name is always in the singular
• Write out numbers and do not use any special characters that are not supported by Mediawiki. The following characters can never be used in page titles:

# < > [ ] | { }  

• In the case of tables, "table" should appear in the name, such as "Table of modelling programs".

In cases of doubt, please contact the editor responsible.

Protect pages from being edited

In order that pages cannot be changed by logged-on users, when new pages are created they must be protected by the authors against editing. This is done using the "Protect" tab that is located above each page. Editing is then only possible for editors and authors.

Versions of Wiki pages

The readers of SaltWiki will see the last released version of a page. As an author, in addition to the page you can also see a link to the most current version in SaltWiki, and you always work on this version, which is released after checking by an editor and thus becomes the most recently released version.

Abstract of the article

A short abstract must precede each article, presenting the content of the article in an easily comprehensible form. The summary should be:

• Objective: Refrain from any personal evaluation or interpretation
• Short: As short as possible
• Comprehensible: Clear, understandable language and structure
• Complete: All significant facts should be explicitly included

Tables

Tables offer a higher information density than lists, for example, as they are visually and semantically structured and thus quicker to comprehend. Data can be sorted numerically by size or alphabetically by term, or both by hierarchy .

Article links

When writing a new contribution, make sure that it is linked with other pages in the Wiki structure:

• Links should be sensible and relevant. The text must also remain comprehensible and informative even without the information that can be retrieved through the links.
• Links whose text differs from the linked site name should be avoided if at all possible.
• If a term appears several times, it should only be linked on its initial appearance. In the case of texts that cover several screen pages, however, another link can be made if it is sensible to do so for the understanding of special paragraphs or facts.

Weblinks

Web links are all links that refer to external websites. They are listed below the text under the heading "Weblinks". More information can be found in Wikipedia.

Footnotes

These are created with the help of the editor. For more information, see the editing help.

Glossary

A glossary entry is created through an entry in the "Glossary" page. For more information, see the editing help.

Categorization

At least one category must be allocated to each article. The authors are requested to select suitable and informative categories for the article, as the software dynamically generates compilations using these categories. Information on categorization can be found on the "Categorization" page.

Formulae and equations

Mathematic and chemical formulae and equations are shown in SaltWiki using "TeX" syntax. More information on this can be found on the help pages.

Abbreviations and acronyms

Only use common abbreviations (such as i.e., e.g.). Avoid any abbreviations beyond these if at all possible . Acronyms are written out in their long form, followed by the short form in brackets. It is not enough just to use the long form at the start of the text, as readers may possibly skip the first paragraph. Special acronyms, which are possibly only known in particular industries, will be explained in the glossary.

Literature

The quality of the article and thus also the significance and recognition of SaltWiki among experts depends on the comprehensibility of the content and the means of checking it. Quotations are given in a standardized manner in accordance with the extension "bibliography".

Illustrations

Images and documents are not uploaded to SaltWiki itself but to the repository. Help is available for this on the upload page.

You can find more useful information in the Wikipedia

• general information
• information on image rights and
• information on free images

We recommend the JPG image format with the lowest possible compression in order to guarantee adequate quality. The EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) can also be saved in JPG format files. A preview image is always created. The following formats are also accepted: PNG, TIFF /TIF, GIF, SVG

Image quality

Illustrations and other documents must always be uploaded in the best-possible quality. Only high-quality starting material will ensure their usability, even in future articles. Categorization of the file to be uploaded must be carried out.

Licences

Each uploaded file is given a licence. The assignment of the licence agreement or conditions of use is the responsibility of the authors uploading a file. Licence modules are available for identification using particular licences.

Repository

Access to scientific primary data is a fundamental precondition for research work. In the repository it is possible to publish primary data and make it more quotable using a DOI. Using metadata, this can then be searched like a printed publication. Only checked data and its metadata can be held in the repository. Each dataset is allocated its own description page by Mediawiki to provide extensive and complete information. Whilst metadata contains information prescribed by a particular scheme, further details can be set up for more detailed identification on the description page.

Documents should be saved in a format that allows long-term access to them. All more recent word processing and spread-sheet programs (e.g. MS Office 2003, 2007, 2010) now permit output in PDF format for long-term archiving (PDF/A). This PDF/A is preferred for text documents and presentations, whilst datasets can also be saved in XML format.

A digital object identifier (DOI) is a character string used to uniquely identify an electronic document.