Alternator is a digital publication (ISSN 2712-3510) written by researchers for readers interested in science and scientific issues. It features contributions that address phenomena, discoveries, and insights about a wide range of subjects related to science. These subjects are divided into three sections: nature, society, and technology. In general, Alternator strives to overcome the polarisation between the social sciences/humanities on the one hand and natural/technical sciences on the other, and to house as much scientific content as possible under the same roof. In the rubric entitled On Science, we publish more essayistic reflections on science as a professional discipline, including its history, politics, and methods, the challenges it faces, and its social effects.

The digital portal Alternator offers an alternative to contemporary media and facilitates unpaid access to a wide array of scientific content across a spectrum of topics. Alternator is the first Slovenian digital portal with content written by researchers themselves in order to bring their research closer to the general public in a professional, but also accessible, manner.

Because Alternator's goal is for readers to read about science directly, without intermediaries, we invite scientists, researchers, and university professors of all generations and perspectives to submit the results of their recent research in the form of an essay or a story. We are looking for contributions that will give our readers insight into specific scientific dilemmas, offer them thoughts on the role of science in their lives, describe the many labyrinthine ways of science, and perhaps even to share personal stories of a more polemical nature.

If you are still reading, you may be deciding whether or not to send a contribution to our editorial board. What follows is a presentation of our submission guidelines which are not intended to intimidate authors or keep them away. To the contrary, we are articulating these guidelines because we want your contributions to reach as many readers as possible, not merely in the form of likes and visibility, but primarily through a deeper understanding of what has been written and read. The precondition of all good writing is an adequate measure of self-reflection. It is towards this self-reflection that we attempt to guide our authors, regardless of scientific or disciplinary affiliation. The editorial board, your interesting and evocative research work, and good communication will take care of the rest.

Alternator: Instructions for use

Style guidelines

Contributions to Alternator should be written in approachable language, suitable for both readers from different scientific fields and readers with only a rudimentary understanding of the covered subject. The text should thus avoid a narrow terminological apparatus that is not familiar to a general or at least popular-science readership. When technical terminology cannot be avoided used, it should be explained.

It is often already during the introduction that readers decide whether to read an article to the end or to put it aside. The introduction is therefore the ideal place to include a subjective perspective, a short anecdote or a description of a generally familiar phenomenon connected to the theme of the article. It is always effective when readers can identify with something at the beginning of the article.

For this reason, the introduction presents an opportunity for a direct address where contributors can attempt to engage readers and convince them to read onward. As the article continues, it should answer the fundamental questions of good reportage: who, what, when, where, why, and how. It is undeniable that good storytelling makes the exploration of scientific questions, and indeed all inquiries, more accessible and appealing. That is why it is essential that the technical elements of the text (including challenging terminology) be presented or reworked into a more narrative form, set in a broader social context, and their purpose, use, and application clearly explained. This allows for both the greater engagement of readers and signals to them what they are going to learn from the text. Contributors should aim to help readers understand how something that might at first seem irrelevant or obscure to them actually has a direct (or indirect) impact on their lives. Thus, the goal of articles published in Alternator is to tell a story that concerns all of us, and above all to explain how it concerns all of us.

Put another way, contributions should be written for a wider readership that extends beyond colleagues who work in the same scientific discipline. Before submission, authors might consider giving their articles to a respected reader for a critical reading. Authors can also test the intelligibility of their texts by reading it to themselves out loud. If, while reading what has been have written, authors lose sight of the article's main theme, it is very likely that the same will happen to readers. Contributions should read as a narrative or a story, not as a sequence of facts – the latter is what often puts off readers and makes them stop reading. Contributors should avoid a telegraphic style and avoid burdening the text with terminology that is not accompanied by appropriate descriptions and explanations. Instead, authors should guide readers through the article's content in an accommodating and coherent manner.

As elsewhere in life, what is crucial with Alternator is the pursuit of balance. Authors should not to say too little about the subject being presents but also not say too much. The content should not be simplified or overexplained to the extent that it is condescending to the reader. Authors should present a topic in an understandable manner, but also be specific and thorough. Take the following sentence as an example: “The biological characteristics of the tumour were mitosis 3 and MIB index minimum 40%”. This sentence does not say much to a lay reader, whereas the following explanation enables them to understand the content: "The biological characteristics of the tumour show that a greater number of cancerous cells (the percentage of cells that spread in an uncontrolled way) are dividing at a higher rate (the mitotic rate)."

For the purpose of comprehension, chemical, physical, and mathematical formulas, terms, and equations, as well as the complex names of various compounds (for example, sphingolipids) that are not essential to the understanding of the subject being presented should be avoided, as they paralyse rather than enrich readers. The practice mentioned above of reading the text out loud is an excellent aid to evaluation the comprehensibility of a text. It is better to emphasise what is crucial for the phenomena being addressed in the text, which are usually mechanisms, behaviours, effects, and uses.

Authors should attempt to connect the introduction and conclusion in an elegant and meaningful way, thereby concluding the narrative arc of the text. Readers will thus emerge from their reading with new conclusions, knowledge, and hopes, and sometimes even a moral catharsis.  

The title of articles should not be too long (the ideal length is eight words) and should arouse curiosity. We are looking for titles that are not overly neutral or bland, and that capture the readers' attention. They can, for example, include wordplay and puns or paraphrases of famous books, films, or songs. In any case, titles should attempt to capture the essence of the article in a single phrase.

Authors should strive to use simple vocabulary. Metaphors and analogies are welcome because they can be useful for explaining a complex phenomenon through a similar mechanism or activity that is familiar from everyday life. If a sentence snakes its way into a fourth line, it is probably too long, and should be divided into several more straightforward sentence.

Technical guidelines

1.  Alternator publishes short and long contributions. Short contributions have a word limit of 1,000 words, long ones should not exceed 2,000 words.

2. Each contribution is published with a photograph, which serves as the cover photograph of the text. The photograph can be supplied by authors, or they can submit recommendations of photographs that they believe best capture the article's content. The photography editor will choose the most suitable photograph. If the photograph was taken by the author, they must provide information regarding consent for publication. Otherwise, it is assumed that the photograph is published under the same copyright license as the text (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). If authors provide photograph by someone else (which is discouraged), they must submit documentation that enables the transfer of the photograph's copyrights prior to publication. If they do not do so, the editorial board refers to the Article 8 of the author's copyright agreement, which states the following: "The author guarantees the ordering party that the use of the copyright work will not lead to infringement of copyrights or any other rights claimed by third persons. Should third persons raise against the ordering party any monetary or non-monetary claims for the infringement of their rights arising from the copyright work, the author shall be responsible for the damage that the ordering party may have incurred and, on its behalf or jointly with it, enter any possible legal or other kind of dispute related to the claims raised by third persons against the ordering party."

• The author is responsible for all additional visual material accompanying the article. The editorial board is only responsible for the cover illustration.

3. The title of contributions should not exceed 80 characters and should contain no more than 10 words. The maximum length for subheadings within the contribution is 60 characters. The maximum length for captions for photographs, graphs, charts, and tables is 200 characters. All of these character limits include spaces.

4. The selection of visual material (photographs, images, graphs, charts) should consider the lay readership of Alternator. The visual material should be self-explanatory. If readers cannot easily decipher the essence of visual material, authors should provide a short summary of the visual material in the text itself. If content can be conveyed in a single sentence, then an accompanying chart is generally not necessary. If visual material included in the text has been published elsewhere, authors must obtain permission from the previous publisher for republication in Alternator. If visual material has been published online (for example, on the website of NASA) and the content is freely accessible, authors should clearly cite the source. Existing charts can also be modified, expanded, or redrawn. In such cases, a reference should be supplied along with the phrase: "adapted from or summarised from…". Contributions should not contain too many charts. Three or four visual items are adequate for contributions up to 2,000 words, one or two for articles of up to 1,000 words.

• Photographs and visual material should be submitted in a separate, editable, document with high resolution. Captions/texts that accompany the visual items should be in either Arial or Calibri font.

5. Authors should avoid non-standard symbolic forms such as formulas, fractions, symbols for integrals, and raised or indented symbols. Chemical formulas and compounds should be written with their full names (for example, NaCl → sodium chloride).

6. The online portal Alternator does not accommodate footnotes. Therefore, notes must be integrated into the body of the text as explanations or encyclopaedic asides. They can also be equipped with hyperlinks that lead to the text/quote or to additional online explanations.

7. The following guidelines are used for the citation of sources:

Authors should avoid literal citations or, if they are necessary, use them infrequently. It is preferable to summarise the insights of other research by reworking the original text, rather than providing literal quotes. Authors should not accumulate citations in an effort to appear well-read on the subject. All citations should be necessary, meaningful, and placed in the right context.

• Titles of books, publications, and journals are cited in italics: Crime and Punishment.
• Parenthesis containing information on the source should include author's last name and the year of publication without punctation: (Novak 2019).
• Literal quotes should be indicated in an English text with the use of quotation marks (double commas): "…". Quotes within quotes are marked with single quotation marks (commas):  '…'.
• Summaries are included without the use of quotation marks. They should be followed by parenthesis containing the source of the information.
• If the author has already been cited in the body of the text, the parenthesis after the quote or paraphrase should contain only the year of the source publication, but not the author's last name.
• If a quote (although we hope it will not be) is longer than four lines of text, it should be separated from the body of the text in an independent paragraph without quotation marks and set into justified alignment.
• If the cited source has two authors, both names, as well as the year of publication, are included: (Novak and Zupančič 2018). If the source has three or more authors, only the name of the first author, the acronym et al., and the year of publication, are included: (Zupančič et al. 2021).
• Interruptions within a direct citation are placed in square brackets [abcdefgh].
• Omissions from a direct citation are marked with an ellipsis placed in square brackets […].
• Use reliable sources!

We ask authors to, where possible, include the name of a source's author with a hyperlink that leads to their work. These hyperlinks may lead to the information system of national library system (for example COBISS in Slovenia), to the website of the publisher that published the cited publication (e.g., Judson 2018), digital library system (for example dLib in Slovenia), or any other digital page with a reliable archive. If the cited article is freely accessible online and it is possible, supply the author’s name with a hyperlink that leads to the article in question (e.g., Brook et al. 2023). It is best to add hyperlinks to specific words or phrases that lead to sources, include the original idea or offer additional explanations of the fact/concept/term/thesis to the reader: "The first disposable (single use) masks, as we know them today, were produced in the 1960s and have become an indispensable part of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the medical sector."

Hyperlinks should be, where possible, cited with a standarised link to a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). With a DOI, the document retains its unique alphanumerical identifier for the entirety of its lifetime, which means that such links will be accessible and stable for longer. At the same time, the consistent use of the DOI systems enables further, precise citations in academic and scientific contexts as well. For example: https://doi.org/10.3986/alternator.2023.19, instead of: https://www.alternator.science/sl/daljse/in-memoriam-aaron-swartz-eticni-heker-ki-je-verjel-v-odprti-dostop/

• Always include a traditional bibliographical list of sources in the article (submitted in Word Document format) as this is required for registration with the DOI system.

General information regarding the publication of texts

Articles will not be peer reviewed but will be evaluated by Alternator editors.

All articles will be published under the licence "Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-Nonderivatives" (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This means that, when authorship of the article is recognised (cited), reproduction and distribution are permitted, but not intervention into the work, renting of the work, or circulation of the work for commercial gain. The same holds true for the visual and graphical content of the piece insofar as the author of that content does not allow otherwise.

The author signs an author's copyright agreement, which clearly states that the author consents to the transfer of copyrights to the client (in this case, that is the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts), the publication of the piece on the online portal Alternator (www.alternator.science), as well as open access to the piece under the license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Authors should also send a short biographical note that does not exceed 100 words and a photograph. The photograph should be high resolution and feature the author facing forward in neutral light (not either in direct sunlight or a dark setting), against a neutral background with no distracting elements. The editorial board retains the right to make minor stylistic corrections to author photographs in order to maintain the consistent visual appearance of the Alternator portal.

The editorial board retains the right to change sections of the text that deviate from the technical and stylistic guidelines. The text will be sent back to the author for review and approval following editorial changes. After the article is published online, no further corrections are possible.

We publish content in Slovenian and English. Articles in foreign language are not translated into Slovenian. In rare cases that have clear justification, articles into Slovenian may be translated to English (and vice versa). In exceptional situations, as well, it is possible for Slovenian authors to submit their work in English. The linguistic corrections of texts and translations is provided by Alternator's editorial staff.

The editorial board retains the right to reject inappropriately composed pieces until they fit the writing guidelines of Alternator online magazine.

If you have any questions, please write to the editorial board of Alternator at the following email address: urednistvo@alternator.science.