NORMAN – To make advanced research results based on rare works in the History of Science broadly available to the public, the University of Oklahoma Libraries’ History of Science Collections and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science’s Research Library in Berlin, Germany have established a new model for academic publishing of primary sources in the history of science. The new platform, Edition Open Sources, combines open access and a rigorous peer-review process to create high-quality scholarly works.

Both participating institutions will digitize and upload copyright-free collections to a repository in order to promote worldwide utilization of the materials. The Edition Open Sources platform is designed to feature original source documents along with transcriptions of the text and critical analysis. The digital formats will be free and immediately accessible worldwide once published.

“This international venture takes our History of Science Collections and the intellectual output resulting from work with our collections out to the world internationally,”said OU Dean of Libraries Rick Luce. “This collaboration connects OU History of Science scholars with the broader community, opens doors for students and faculty wanting to collaborate with scholars at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and moves the library from a place for information discovery to a place for creating scholarship.”

“The Department of the History of Science and its faculty are excited to participate in this innovative project, which provides a model infrastructure for both scholarly collaboration and connection to the wider world,” said department chair Hunter Heyck.

“The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science has been a pioneer in the frame of digital humanities and increasingly disseminates its research results according to the open access paradigm and on the basis of the Berlin Declaration,” said Jürgen Renn, director of the institute. “As the institute is a place of pure research, the collaboration with the renowned OU libraries and the academic department for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine also represents a great opportunity to broaden the scope of the research and to intensify scholarly exchange. But above all, the institute is proud to shape the future of academic publishing together with its colleagues at the University of Oklahoma, and welcomes this new member to the Edition Open Access venture.”

For more information about Edition Open Sources, please visit www.edition-open-sources.org or email eos@ou.edu. Apply for a post-doctoral fellowship at http://jobs.ou.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=85389.