Instructions for Authors

Before submitting a book proposal, please study the submission guidelines. See below to find out more about proposal subject areas learn about the sources or primary texts to be published, and to understand our peer review process.

Before Submitting

Each EOS project in the Edition Open Sources series is centered on one or more critical editions of primary sources, including both historical commentary by the author as well as facsimile and transcribed primary sources (see Book Structure and Published Formats).

Before submitting a proposal, authors should contact EOS to check on the availability of primary source texts. All primary sources in EOS must be published under an open access license (see About the Sources and Terms of Publication).

The University of Oklahoma Libraries and the Library of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science grant permission to use all primary source works held in their rare book collections for EOS publications. Works not held by these two institutions will have to be provided from other libraries. Potential authors will work with EOS editors to locate these works at institutions which will grant permission to publish primary sources under the required open access license.

Submission Guidelines

Each book proposal should contain the following information:

  1. The proposed title for the book
  2. A statement of the aims and rationale of the book
  3. A one-page synopsis of the project.
  4. A draft of the table of contents.
  5. A sample chapter or related material (if available).
  6. A short biographical paragraph for all authors, editors and contributors involved with the book, and a short CV for the principal author(s) or editor(s).
  7. Details regarding special features, including tables, further reading sections, bibliography, glossary, linked web site, etc.
  8. Details regarding the number and type of illustrations you would like to feature, e.g. photographs, line-drawings, maps, music examples.
  9. The estimated word length.
  10. The estimated delivery date of the finished manuscript.
  11. Suggestions for appropriately qualified academic referees or reviewers.
  12. If the book is a revised version of the PhD thesis or other publications, details should be given concerning the content of the revision. Copies of these previous publications must be included with the proposal.

Please submit your book proposal in a single PDF file to submission@edition-open-sources.org.

Proposal Subject Areas

Proposals are welcomed across a wide range of subject areas, spanning the fields of science, technology and medicine. A project may involve a single source or several sources in combination.

We particularly welcome proposals to publish sources meeting any of the following criteria:

  1. Sources related to ongoing research projects of the host institution. For Department 1 of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, review the corresponding section of the last annual report. For the University of Oklahoma, review the faculty pages and research section of the Department of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine website.
  2. Sources involving items of special interest held in the host institution library. For more information see MPIWG Sources and OU Sources.
  3. Sources involving collaborative projects and/or clusters of related texts.

We invite research teams to submit proposals involving collaborative projects and clusters of related texts, because the full potential of the EOS-X platform will be realized with publication of populations of interrelated texts (see Published Formats).

About the Sources

Identifying and Obtaining Sources

Before a source may be published in Edition Open Sources, high-resolution color facsimile images of the work must be available, cover to cover, with an Open Access license (see Terms of Publication). Sources must not be under copyright, which generally means that they were published before 1925 or they are provided by an open access library or archive. Any work held by the libraries of either host institution is eligible for consideration and may be digitized by the host library for the EOS scholar. Sources held at other institutions may be published in EOS only if a formal agreement is provided granting open access terms for hosting the images, and assuming the images are provided in high enough quality. (See Proposal Subject Areas and Published Formats.)

Sources at the MPIWG

All historical sources owned by the Library of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science are eligible for publication in Edition Open Sources.

For assistance in locating sources and obtaining suitable images from the MPIWG, consult with the Head of the Library, Esther Chen (echen@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de) and the Library of the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte.

On the basis of the ongoing research projects at Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the following sources are suggested:

  1. Piccolomini, Alessandro. De la institutione di tutta la vita de l’homo. Venetia: Scotus, 1542.
  2. Tartaglia, Nicolò. General trattato di numeri et misure. 3 vols. Venezia: Curzio Troiano Navò, 1556–1560.
  3. Piccolomini, Alessandro. Editione tertia della sfera del mondo di M. Alisandro Piccolomini, divisa in libri quattro [….] Delle Stelle fisse libro uno. Vinegia 1553.
  4. Giuntini, Francesco. La sfera del mondo. In Lione: Appresso Simforiano Beraud, 1582.
  5. Proclo/Danti: La sfera di Proclo Liceo tradotta da Maestro Egnazio Danti. In Fiorenza: Nella Stamperia de’ Giunti, 1573.
  6. al-Bitruji (12th Century): Planetarum theorica physicis rationibus probata, Venetia 1531.
  7. al-Farghani (9th Century). Introductory work appeared under different titles: Compilatio astronomica. Ferrara 1493; Rudimenta astronomica. Nürnberg 1537 and Paris 1546; Chronologica et astronomica elementa. Frankfurt a.M. 1590 and 1618; Elementa astronomica. Amsterdam 1669.
  8. Thabit ibn Qurra (10th Century): De imagine totius mundi (together with Johannes de Sacrobosco. Tractatus de sphaera. Leipzig 1503 and 1509.
  9. Thabit ibn Qurra (10th Century): De recta imaginatione sphaerae (together with other works on astronomy) Venetia 1518.
  10. al-Battani (10th Century): De motu stellarum (with Regiomontanus’ additions. Nürnberg, 1537 and Roma 1645.
  11. Erwin Schrödinger. Forschungsnotizbücher zur Wellenmechanik. 1925-1927.
  12. Grete Hermann, Werke zur Philosophie der Physik:
    1. Die naturphilosophischen Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik. 1935.
    2. Die Bedeutung der modernen Physik für die Theorie der Erkenntnis. 1937.
    3. Über die Grundlagen physikalischer Aussagen. 1937.
  13. Erhard Scheibe “Explanation, Reduction, Progress”, Manuscript for a lecture in Irvine, California, 1987.

Sources at OU

Any pre-copyright work held by the University of Oklahoma Libraries History of Science Collections is eligible for publication in Edition Open Sources. The breadth of holdings may be illustrated by searching the catalog for any edition of figures such as Johannes de Sacrobosco, Georgius Agricola, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Christopher Clavius, Galileo Galilei, Francesco Hernandez, René Descartes, Nicolaus Steno, Nicolas Desmarest, or William Smith.

To search the OU Libraries catalog for works held by the History of Science Collections, go to University of Oklahoma Libraries and click the link for “Discover Local (Catalog).”  For
assistance in using the catalog or obtaining Open Access images from OU Libraries, consult with the Edition Open Sources Manager for OU (eos@ou.edu).

Peer-Review process

Edition Open Sources follows a double-blind to open peer review process. This means that review begins with a standard double-blind practice. If the manuscript is accepted, all of the review correspondence, including the author responses, are published openly as a separate document on the EOS website at the time of publication of the book.

After submission, each book proposal is relayed to two reviewers. The review process will result in a determination of one of three outcomes: accept (with or without revisions), revise and resubmit, or reject. Those projects designated as “revise and resubmit” will be given a fixed period of time for resubmission. These submissions will be sent again to the same reviewers. Accepted manuscripts move directly into the editorial workflow, and undergo a final editorial review before publication.