Author guidelines

About TATuP and its readership

Contributions to TATuP – Journal for Technology Assessment in Theory and Practice address topics from the interdisciplinary field of technology assessment, including related and overlapping fields of research such as systems analysis, risk assessment, practical ethics, sustainable development, innovation and technology analysis, or foresight.

TATuP's readership is inter- and transdisciplinary. Authors in TATuP adhere to scientific standards and present their topics in generally accessible language and style.

Before you submit

Interested in submitting to this journal? Please first inform yourself about the journal profile and the journal sections. Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process.

Journal sections and article types

For each journal section, manuscripts of different article types can be submitted. Publications in TATuP belong to either of the following article types:
- “Research article” in the journal sections “Special topic” and “Research”;
- “Interview” in the journal section “Interview”;
- “Book review”, “Meeting report”, “Reply” to former publications, “Letter to the editor” or similar contributions regarding the journals profile in the journal section “Reflections”.

Open access and licensing

Open access policy: TATuP is an open access journal (online and in print).
No author processing charges (no APC) apply for peer review, editorial processing or publication of a manuscript.
TATuP is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
The journal website provides free online access to the entire current issue and complete archive of the journal.

Creative Commons license and copyright: TATuP is an open access journal. If not otherwise indicated, all articles are published under the Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0. According to this CC license, TATuP contributions may be reprinted or otherwise distributed as long as the authors are credited and the complete bibliographical data are cited. Authors agree to publish their articles under the Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0 by giving their approval for publication in TATuP.

The full copyright as well as all other exploitation rights remain with the authors. The corresponding author’s acceptance of the license agreement is valid for the whole team of authors and all parts of the article, including, e.g., figures. If this rule should not apply in particular cases, please get back to the editors in good time.

Publication ethics and scientific integrity

Authors in TATuP must recognize their responsibilities in upholding ethical standards and pursue best practices in scholarly publishing, see therefore TATuP’s Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement.

Adherence to DFG and COPE standards: TATuP supports the recommendations of the German Research Foundation (DFG) regarding TATuP also fully supports the Core Practices developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

TATuP will take all appropriate measures against publication malpractices like alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism. This includes the prompt publication of errata or, in the most severe cases, the complete retraction of the affected work. TATuP uses the plagiarism checking tool iThenticate to check submissions against previous publications.

Authorship requirements and good scientific practice: TATuP supports the recommendations of the German Research Foundation (DFG) regarding Recommendation 14 on the authorship of publications states: “Authors of scientific publications are always jointly responsible for their content. Only someone who has made a significant contribution to a scientific publication is deemed to be its author. A so-called “honorary authorship” is inadmissible.”

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study, or the research paper

Conflicts of interest: Authors have to indicate in the author submission form if they are institutionally, contractually, or otherwise related with subject of their contribution and if this results in a conflict of interest regarding their independent judgement.

Ethical oversight: If applicable, authors have to confirm in the author submission form that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines.

Use of generative AI

Research data: TATuP supports and encourages the publication of research data and the reference to data upon which the respective article is based. Authors may draft a data availability statement at the end of their article under the heading “research data”.

Your dataset(s)

  • must be deposited in an appropriate data repository;
  • must have a license applied which allows reuse by others (CC0 or CC-BY);
  • must have a persistent identifier (e.g. a DOI), allocated by a data repository.

By referencing research data in TATuP authors acknowledge compliance with the Open Data, Software and Code Guidelines issued by Open Research Europe. Here, you can also find a list of appropriate data repositories.
Research data must be cited in alignment with TATuP citation style, e.g.:
Kreuschner, Moritz; Nagel, Kai; Schlenther, Tilmann; Bonatz, Nora; Mostofi, Hamid; Dienel, Hans-Liudger (2023): Ergänzendes Material Dekarbonisierung des Verkehrssektors in Berlin – Bürger:innengutachten zu wissenschaftlich erstellten Szenarien. Berlin: Technische Universität Berlin. https://doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-19472

Data protection notice: Personal data 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.

Review process

All manuscripts published in TATuP go through a review process. Manuscripts to be published in the journal sections “Special topic” and “Research” go through a double open (“non-blind”) peer review process with external reviewers, i.e. authors and reviewers know each other by name. Manuscripts for other journal sections are reviewed by the editorial team.

The central aim of the peer review process is quality assurance. The reviewers’ comments support the editorial team, "Special topic" editors, and editorial board of the journal in their assessment of manuscripts and include suggestions for their improvement. This also includes the reasoned rejection of manuscripts.

The criteria for evaluation are scientific quality, relevance, substance, style, novelty, and suitability regarding the topic and audiences. Authors may read more on the review guidelines on the TATuP website.

Reviewers must treat all information from manuscripts under review confidentially before publication, or in the event that the manuscript is rejected. Reviews and possible replies from the authors are not published.

Manuscript submission requirements

Manuscripts are submitted by one corresponding author (‘Primary contact’) together with the Author submission form and, if applicable, supplementary materials. The editorial team will only communicate with this person. Please pay attention to the following information:

  • Submissions to the journal's section “Special topic” answer the current Call for Abstracts. Manuscripts for other journal sections may be submitted at any time;
  • Manuscripts are obliged to participate in a review process;
  • Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution (see “Authorship requirements” above);
  • Only original work of one's own authorship may be submitted;
  • Submissions must comply with the journal's Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement;
  • Authors edit manuscripts based on the author guidelines listed below and use the appropriate TATuP word template;
  • Authors submit manuscripts online.

Authors agree with editorial amendments to their paper. Orthographic corrections and minor stylistic modifications, which do not change the content, are done without consulting the author(s). In case of revisions concerning the content, the editors will contact the corresponding author. Prior to the printing of the paper, the corresponding author will receive a proof version for their final approval.

Pre-prints: TATuP will consider for review articles previously available as preprints, on condition that the authors agree to the below:

  • The authors retain copyright to the preprint and are permitted to submit to the journal.
  • The authors declare that a preprint is available within the cover letter presented during submission. This must include a link to the location of the preprint.
  • Should the submission be published, the authors are expected to update the information associated with the preprint version to show that a final version has been published in the journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.

Any previous publication as a preprint should be disclosed in the paper.

Formal manuscript requirements

Template
Submissions will only be considered if using the appropriate TATuP template which can be downloaded as Word file here.

Length
The maximum length of a paper depends on the section in which it will appear. For scientific contributions in the section “Special topic” or “Research” a maximum of 28,000 characters is permitted (+/- 10%, including spaces, headlines, abstract, references, comments, and author details). In the section “Reflections”, the length of conference proceedings is limited to a maximum of 10,000 characters including spaces. If applicable, the allowed length of the text might be reduced by figures and tables.

Style
TATuP addresses both an interdisciplinary scientific and a non-scientific audience. The style of the articles should to take this into account and be generally comprehensible.

Language
TATuP welcomes submissions in English and German. All research articles are published with an English abstract. The authors are responsible for style and quality. We recommend that articles which are not written by native speakers should be checked by professional translators.

Title
The title of scientific articles in the sections “Special topic” and “Research” has to be split into a main title and an (explanatory) subtitle and provided in German and English.

Author details
The author details include first and last name, institution, city, country code as well as an e-mail address. All participating authors are listed with their full postal address, in case of differing institutions. An author identification number from the Integrated Authority File (GND) or ORCID for each author may be added.
A short biographical text (maximum of 350 characters) has to be provided for each author.

Abstract
For contributions in the sections “Special topic” and “Research” an abstract in both German and English has to be provided, each with a maximum of 150 Words including spaces.

Keywords
Up to five keywords in English language must be provided for each scientific paper in the sections “Special topic” and “Research”. If these keywords are chosen from a widely-used keyword catalogue or thesaurus (which is recommended), then this should be cited as a reference.

Figures, diagrams, pictures, and tables
Figures and tables are welcome as useful additions to the text. They should be embedded into the submitted manuscript with a reference in the text, need a title and the indication of the source, optionally also a descriptive legend. If figures were compiled by the author, please use the phrase “Source: author’s own compilation” as reference. Figures (charts, diagrams, pictures, etc.) and tables have to be numbered separately, the references from the text have to be added. In total, an article may include up to 6 figures and tables, but not more than 4 of each.
The editorial team makes a final decision regarding size and positioning of figures and tables within the paper for reasons of page planning and layout.

Technical specifications for figures
To create figures such as diagrams and charts, programs which depict the individual elements as vectors should be used (e.g., PowerPoint, Excel, Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, etc.).
Figures (diagrams, charts, etc.) always have to be submitted as a) file in the original format (PowerPoint, Excel, Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, etc.) and additionally b) as file in a non-changeable format like JPG, TIFF, or PDF.
If a figure is only available in a pixel-oriented data format (TIFF, JPG, etc.), the texts and values contained in the chart have to be submitted in an additional Excel or Word table.
Pictures and other pixel-oriented figures (e.g., screenshots) have to comply with the following specifications:

  • Format: TIFF or JPG
  • Size: at least 300 ppi with a width of 90 mm (single column) or 180 mm (two columns)
  • File name: last name-first name-fig-[no.].tif or .jpg (e.g., Müller-Heinz-fig-1a.jpg)

Technical specifications for tables
Tables always have to be created with the Word table function and inserted into the text at the correct position.
If a table is only available as image file, the respective technical specifications for figures apply (see there).

Technical specifications for author portraits

  • Format: TIFF or JPG
  • Size: In order to ensure a good portrait, the portrait should be approx. 25 mm wide at 300 ppi.
  • File name: Last name-first name.tif or .jpg (e.g., Müller-Heinz.jpg)

Rights
By submitting the paper and the relevant files for figures and tables, the authors declare that they have the rights to use the figures, pictures, diagrams, and tables and that they can be published under the license CC BY 4.0.

Subheadings
Articles in the sections “Special topic”, “Research”, and “Reflections” have to be structured with subheadings. Second-level subheadings are accepted for scientific contributions (“Special topic”, “Research”). Subheadings are not numbered.

Enumerations and lists
Numbered and unnumbered enumerations (lists) should be used sparingly and without additional hierarchy level.

Footnotes
Footnotes are only allowed for additional explanations to the main text, not for bibliographical references. They should be used sparingly. Footnotes are also not to be used for quoting URLs. The websites quoted have to be included in the bibliography.

Citation management software
To assist authors in meeting TATuP citation standards, output styles (German and English) are available in Citavi, Endnote and Zotero. You can find TATuP citation styles in the lists of either citation tool.
The quality of the output depends on the metadata authors enter into the citation management software. Therefore, authors must ensure that in-text citations and bibliography comply with the following standards.

Quoted references and bibliographical data
Literature used for the article has to be quoted completely and correctly according to scientific standards. Literal or paraphrased quotes have to be given with a page number.
The literature quoted is referenced in the text in parentheses:

  • plain references in the form (last name year of publication),
    (Grunwald 2012)
  • quotes with page numbers (last name year of publication, pp. 6-16),
    (Grunwald 2012, p. 16)
  • two authors (last name and last name year of publication),
    (Grunwald and Bechmann 2012)
  • more than two authors (last name et al. year of publication),
    (Grunwald et al. 2012)
  • several sources (last name year of publication; last name year of publication),
    (Grunwald 2012; Luhmann 2002)
    (Grunwald 2012, p. 16; Luhmann 2002, pp. 45-56)
  • several works by one author (last name year, year),
    (Nierling 2012, 2014)
    (Grunwald 2012a, 2012b; Nierling 2014, pp. 8-17)

“cf.” or “see” or similar additions have to be avoided.

An alphabetical list of references with the complete bibliographical data of the quoted literature has to be provided at the end of the contribution. It should not contain more than 40 entries.

List of references
The following specifications apply for all types of publications:

  • Please separate several authors with semicolons. More than six authors: Please use et al. after the first author.
  • Only give the first given name, not the middle name. (Exception: hyphenated names)
  • If the “author” cannot be identified (authors can also be institutions!), please specify “n.a.”. If the publication date cannot be identified, please state “n.d.”. If the place of publication or the publisher cannot be identified, please state “n.p.”.
  • No capitalization of titles in English (exceptions: personal and place names etc.)

         Monographs
         [Surname, Given name (Year): Title. Subtitle. Place: Publisher. https://doi.org/nn]
         Grunwald, Armin (2016): Nachhaltigkeit verstehen. Arbeiten an der Bedeutung nachhaltiger Entwicklung. Munich: oekom.
         Backhaus, Klaus; Erichson, Bernd; Plinke, Wulff; Weiber, Rolf (2015): Multivariate Analysemethoden. Eine anwendungsorientierte Einführung. Berlin: Springer.
         Cacilo, Andrej et al. (2015): Hochautomatisiertes Fahren auf Autobahnen. Industriepolitische Schlussfolgerungen. Stuttgart: Fraunhofer Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation.

         Journal articles
         [Surname, Given name (Year): Title. Subtitle. In: Journal Volume (Issue number), pp. nn-nn. https://doi.org/nn] 
         Petersen, Imme; Kollek, Regine (2014): The symbolic relevance of feedback. Return and disclosure of genomic research results of breast cancer patients in Belgium, Germany and the UK. In: Journal of Clinical Research & Bioethics 6 (4), pp. 1-7. https://doi.org/10.4172/2155-9627.A0230 
         Sotoudeh, Mahshid (2008): Mitverantwortung für Technikfolgen übernehmen. In: GAIA – Ökologische Perspektiven für Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft 17 (2), pp. 251-253. https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.17.2.17

         Edited volumes
         [Surname, Given name (ed.) (Year): Title. Subtitle. Place: Publisher. https://doi.org/nn]  
         Lingner, Stephan; Lutterbeck, Bernd; Pallas, Frank (eds.) (2010): Die Zukunft der Räume. Gesellschaftliche Fragen auf dem Weg zur „Ambient Intelligence“. Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler: Europäische Akademie.

         Contributions in edited volumes
         [Surname, Given name (Year): Title. Subtitle. In: First given name Surname (ed.): Title. Subtitle. Place: Publisher, pp. nn-nn. https://doi.org/nn]
         Please separate several editors with commas and use “and” between the last two. More than six editors: Please use “et al.” after the first editor. Only give the first given name, not the middle name.
         Woisetschläger, David (2015): Machtauswirkungen des automatisierten Fahrens. In: Markus Maurer, Christian Gerdes, Barbara Lenz and Hermann Winner (eds.): Autonomes Fahren. Technische, rechtliche und gesellschaftliche Aspekte. Berlin: Springer Vieweg, pp. 709-732. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-         45854-9_32
         Nierling, Linda; Dominguez-Rué, Emma (2016): All that glitters is not silver. Technologies for the elderly in context. Introduction. In: Emma Dominguez-Rué and Linda Nierling (eds.): Ageing and technology. Perspectives from the Social Sciences. Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 9-23. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839429570-001

         Talks
         [Surname, Given name (Year): Title. Subtitle. Conference name. Place, Country, dd.mm.yyyy. https://doi.org/nn]  
         Weil, Marcel (2016): System analysis for the recycling of carbon fiber rein-forced plastic materials from electric vehicles production. 10th Society and Materials Conference. Rome, Italy, 09.05.2016.

         (Governmental) Institutions
         [Institution (Year): Title. Subtitle. Place: Publisher.] 
         EPTA – European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (2016): The future of labour in the digital era. Ubiquitous computing, virtual platforms, and real-time production. Vienna: ITA.

         Printed newspapers
         [Surname, Given name (Year): Title. Subtitle. In: Newspaper, dd.mm.yyyy, pp. nn-nn.]
         Bethge, Philip (2019): Blindes Vertrauen. In: DER SPIEGEL, 20.07.2019, pp. 100-103.

         Online newspapers
         [Surname, Given name (Year): Title. Subtitle. In: News site, dd.mm.yyyy. Available online at Link, last accessed on dd.mm.yyyy.]
         Nestler, Ralf (2016): Nobelpreisträger fordern Greenpeace zum Umdenken auf. In: Der Tagesspiegel Online, 05.07.2016. Available online at https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/gruene-gentechnik-nobelpreistraeger-fordern-greenpeace-zum-umdenken-auf/13809758.html, last accessed on 04.10.2017.
         Staufenberg, Jess (2015): Two eagles mistake a drone for food in Austria. In: The Independent, 13.11.2015. Available online at https://www.independent.co.uk/video/News/two-eagles-mistake-a-drone-for-food-in-austria-a6733351.html, last accessed on 14.05.2018.

         Internet sources  
         [Surname, Given name (Year): Title. Subtitle. Available online at Link, last accessed on dd.mm.yyyy.]
         Institution (Year): Title. Subtitle. Available online at Link, last accessed on dd.mm.yyyy.
         Skoda, Ansgar (2019): KI geht unter die Haut. Möglichkeiten und Risiken künstlicher Intelligenz. Available online at https://www.openta.net/blog/KIgehtunterdieHautM%C3%B6glichkeitenundRisikenk%C3%BCnstlicherIntelligenz.113, last accessed on 29.05.2019.
         BMBF – Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (2015): ZukunftsMonitor. Gesundheit neu denken. Available online at https://www.zukunft-verstehen.de/download_file/view/128/436, last accessed on 04.03.2019.

         Self-quotations
         Articles in TATuP are original contributions which have not been published elsewhere before. If the contribution refers in larger parts to previous publications of the authors, this has to be indicated by quoting the original or in another suitable way.

         Questions?
         The editorial team is happy to help. If you have any questions, please contact the editors by e-mail: redaktion@tatup.de.

Version: 2025-07-24