Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis is a publication series published by the Donner Institute for research in Religious and Cultural History in Åbo, Finland. The aim of the institute, which is attached to the Foundation of Åbo Akademi University, is to conduct and promote scholarly research in the field of religion.
About the Journal
Focus and Scope
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis is a publication series published by the Donner Institute for research in Religious and Cultural History in Åbo, Finland. The aim of the institute, which is attached to the Foundation of Åbo Akademi University, is to conduct and promote scholarly research in the field of religion. The Institute is active in two main areas: research and library facilities. The Donner Library is the largest special library on Comparative Religion in the Nordic countries.
The research is focused mainly on religious studies, with a special emphasis on mysticism and esotericism, but research of a more general humanistic character is supported as well. The Institute offers international symposia and roundtable conferences on a regular basis, produces print and electronic publications, and awards research scholarships and prizes.
The publication series Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis was inaugurated in 1967 with the aim to publish papers presented at conferences and symposia organised by the institute. The series has previously been published in printed form but from 2014 onwards, Scripta is published as an open access e-publication. The digitalization of previous issues of the series has been completed so that all issues are now available online at this website.
Most years, Scripta publishes one issue (in May/June). It addresses an international readership and approaches the field of religion from a broad perspective, engaging contributors from different theoretical and methodological traditions. The Editorial Board consists of prominent scholars of religion from around the world, representing a wide variety of subfields, theoretical and methodological approaches and cultural contexts within the study of religion.
Articles published in the journal have in general been presented at conferences or roundtable seminars arranged at the Donner Institute. Therefore, each issue of Scripta focuses on a specific theme that has been dealt with at the seminar and submissions are in general accepted only from scholars who have participated in the seminar in question.
Articles are selected on the basis of a double blind peer-review process, carried out in two steps. A first selection of articles is made by the editor and the guest editors. Thereafter the articles are assessed by external reviewers, in a process where both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from each other.
Professional proofreading services are provided for submissions accepted for publication.
Scripta is currently included in the following databases and indexes:
- ATLA Religion Database (fulltext)
- Bibliographic Information Base in Patristique/Base d'Information Bibliographique en Patristique (BibP) (selected articles)
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- Religious Studies Bibliography (RelBib) (partially)
- Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Sciences and Humanities (Web of Science)
- Index Theologicus: International Bibliography of Theology and Religious Studies
- Sherpa Romeo
Reviewer Guidelines
The reviewers are asked to pay attention to the following aspects of the article in their written assessment:
- general significance of the topic
- attention to the relevant literature
- research design and data analysis
- logic of the argument
- quality of the writing and demonstrated relevance for the field.
On the basis of this assessment, the reviewer recommends one of the following decisions:
- Accept submission
- Revisions required
- Resubmit for review
- Resubmit elsewhere
- Decline submission
Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. No subscription is needed to access the articles and no download fees are charged.
Authors are not charged for publications in this journal, neither submission fee nor article processing fee.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
The use of articles, starting with Vol. 29 (2020), is governed by the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) as currently displayed on https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Please note that articles included in Vol.1 – Vol. 28 are governed by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License as currently displayed on https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
The license of the published metadata (i.e. information about the article, such as title, abstract, author, and keywords) is Creative Commons CCO 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) as currently displayed on https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
The images, illustrations, graphs and tables published in Scripta are not included in the license. The images are subject to the original copyright licences. The license for using the metadata of published articles is CC 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).
Author's Guarantee
- The Author acknowledges that the Work will be publicly accessible on the Internet and that such access will be free of charge for the readers.
- The Author guarantees that the Work is her/his original work that has not been published before and cannot be construed as copying or plagiarism. Furthermore, the Author confirms that the Work contains no statement that is unlawful, defamatory or abusive or in any way infringes the rights of others.
- The Author confirms that she/he has secured all written permissions needed for the reproduction in the Publication of any material created by a third party.
User Rights
Under the CC BY 4.0 license, the Author/s and users are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format,
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially,
- However, the Work must be attributed to the original Author and source of publication.
Under the CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) under the following conditions:
- the Work must be attributed to the Author and Publication,
- the Work may not be used for commercial purposes,
- the Work may not be altered or transformed.
Rights of Authors
The Authors maintain the right to:
- copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the Work,
- the right to use the substance of the Work in future own works,
- the right to self-archiving/parallel publishing (publisher's PDF allowed).
Rights of Publisher
The Publisher reserves the right to make such editorial changes as may be necessary to make the Work suitable for publication in the publication, e.g. style of punctuation, spelling, headings and the like.
The Publisher will publish the Work if the editorial process is successfully completed and reserves the right not to proceed with publication for whatever reason.
The publication entitles the author to no royalties or other fees. This agreement will be governed by the laws of Finland.
Publication ethics and malpractice
The journal is committed to following the peer review instructions of Finnish Association for Scholarly Publishing and the instructions and principles in "Responsible conduct of research and procedures for handling allegations of misconduct in Finland" issued by Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity. Since 2015, all peer-reviewed articles are indicated with the peer-review label issued by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies.
Privacy Statement
The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. Please read the Journal.fi Privacy Policy. The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies and the journal are joint controllers. Their respective responsibilities are described in the document.
Archiving
All previous volumes of the journal are permanently available in full text at this website free of charge. This journal also utilizes Doria, which is a multi-institutional repository maintained by National Library of Finland, to permanently archive the journal articles for purposes of preservation and restoration. For more information: http://www.doria.fi/
The Authors retain the right to self-archiving/parallel publishing (publisher's PDF allowed).
Journal History
The Donner Institute is a private research institute attached to the Foundation for Åbo Akademi University, and was established in 1959 as a result of a large donation made by Olly and Uno Donner. The stated aim of the donation is 'to encourage scholarly research in religious and cultural history' with an emphasis on mysticism and esotericism but also including the study of 'modern phenomena in religion, philosophy, science, art, and literature'.
In order to fulfil this aim, the Donner Institute maintains a research library, which today has grown into the largest special library on religion in the Nordic countries. The institute also supports research in the field by awarding scholarships and prizes. In addition, the institute organises international conferences, roundtable seminars and research networks on topics related to the research area.
In 1961, a professorship in comparative religion was created at Åbo Akademi University on the basis of funds donated by the Donner Institute. A year after that, the first Nordic conference was arranged at the institute on the theme of Shamanism. The publication series Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis was inaugurated to publish papers read at these conferences. The first director of the Donner Institute, Professor Helmer Ringgren, describes the symposia in the following words in his editorial to the first volume of Scripta – a description that is as valid as ever today, almost half a century later in 1967:
'The aim of these symposia is to bring together specialists from different fields of study to discuss problems of religion, each elucidating them from his [sic] particular point of view. In this age of specialization this combination of approaches seems to be very valuable method of studying a phenomenon of such a complex nature as religion.'
In its early days, Scripta was published with intervals of three to five years between the volumes. Since 2007, the series has produced one volume per year. All these volumes have now been made available in open access at this website.
