Call for submissions for the digitisation, encoding and electronic publication of books in the humanities and social sciences

OpenEdition, the electronic resource portal, is launching a call for submissions from university presses, private publishers and learned societies publishing high quality books in the humanities and social sciences who wish to distribute a part of their catalogue in Open Access. OpenEdition offers to digitise, then publish and distribute online in Open Access all or part of publishers’ book catalogue on its dedicated platform, OpenEdition Books. The program is run by the Centre for Open Electronic Publishing (Cléo), a non-profit making institution, financed by the French State. It aims to build an international library for the digital humanities, while encouraging publishers to adopt Open Access in the long term.

Joining OpenEdition Books means:

• Joining the OpenEdition ecosystem, one of the leading European open electronic publishing platforms, which includes the renowned platforms: Revues.org, Calenda and Hypotheses. Together all sites attract almost 3 million visits per month from around the world.
• Integration in a platform that will steadily grow to 15,000 books. Our program promotes all cultural domains, through all historical periods in most scientific languages. The ambition of OpenEdition Books is summed up thus: “Understanding the world in every language.”
• Taking part in an innovative program that is developing a steadfast economic model for Open Access. The program is known as OpenEditionFreemium, and consists of selling services and products derived on the basis of Open Access work. Open Access books distributed in HTML format, legible in a web browser, can be downloaded in detachable formats (PDF, ePub, Mobi) exclusively for the users of subscriber libraries. Other users can purchase these formats on a unit-by-unit basis at one of over one hundred electronic online libraries (iBookstore, Amazon, etc.).

Eligibility and distribution

• The offer is open to all languages. Publications in the following languages are especially welcome: French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Arabic.
• Books will cover the Arts, Literature, Humanities and Social Sciences in the broad sense of the terms. This means that books relating to the environment or to health, in particular, are also welcome.
• Books will be submitted to technical, academic evaluation.
• At least 50% of the titles will be disseminated in Open Access.
• All books will also be on sale in libraries and in electronic bookstores.
• Monographs will be preferred over collective books. Conference proceedings, study day content, bibliographies, excavation accounts and periodicals will not be accepted within the framework of this campaign.

A non-profit making public initiative

The Centre for Open Electronic Publishing (Cléo) is a non-profit making public initiative, supported by the Research Ministry (Bibliothèque scientifique numérique) and  by four French research institutions: the Centre National de la Recherche scientifique (CNRS), the Université d’Aix-Marseille (AMU), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), and the Université d’Avignon. It is also financed by the Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian and the Google Grant for Digital Humanities program. Cléo currently offers three complementary publication and communication platforms for the humanities and social sciences:

• Revues.org: founded in 1999, which today distributes more than 350 journals and 80,000 articles on immediate or differed Open Access.
• Calenda: founded in 2000, which has already published 19,000 academic event announcements.
• Hypothèses: founded in 2008, which now hosts over 500 research blogs, containing 35,000 posts and articles relating to research in the humanities and social sciences.

All these platforms make up the OpenEdition portal which receives nearly 3 million visitors per month by offering content in over ten publication languages from over twenty different countries. Before the end of 2012, the OpenEdition Books platform will also complete this set to form a full-scale digital library for the humanities and social sciences.

A future investment with long term funding

In February 2012, Cléo was awarded the Label Equipex future investment award. The international jury and the French Ministry of Research and Higher Education recognised OpenEdition’s capabilities as a strategic domain for research and innovation. Within the framework of this program, OpenEdition will be awarded 7 millions euros over 8 years (2012-2019), and will construct an international library for Open Access publishing and the digital humanities.

The project is supported by the Centre for Open Electronic Publishing (Cléo, Marseille, Paris and Lisbon), in partnership with the Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe (CCSD, Lyon), the Laboratoire des Sciences de l’Information et des Systèmes (LSIS-CNRS, Marseilles), the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (CHNM, Washington) and the Open Access Publishing in European Netbooks (Oapen, the Hague).

 Contact

If you wish to receive further information or information about please contact us at the following address: publishers@openedition.org

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