Guidelines for Submitting Proposals to the Internet Shakespeare Editions

1. General information

Proposals for materials to be posted on the site of the Internet Shakespeare Editions should be submitted by email to the Coordinating Editor, Michael Best, mbest1[at]uvic.ca. All proposals will be reviewed by the Editorial Board.

Proposals may be submitted by individuals or by a group of collaborating scholars. Proposals may be for editions of the plays or poems; they may also be for the preparation of supporting documents (sources etc.) or for the development of performance materials. In the case of plays with multiple source texts, (Hamlet, Lear etc.) single text editions will be considered.

All correspondence will be carried out by email, and all work in progress and final submission will be submitted by email. Contributors should be reasonably computer literate and should have a basic knowledge of HTML, but will not be asked to undertake the final, detailed tagging of text.

2. The editions

General information about what the editions will include, their structure, and the nature of the copyright retained by contributors is available here. 

Specific guidelines for editors have been developed; some sections from them are available online. (Note that these guidelines are in the process of being revised.)

2.1. Publication

The electronic medium allows for publication to be incremental. Editors normally begin with establishing the accuracy of the old-spelling transcriptions, then develop the modern spelling text, the collations, and notes. Each of these components can be published as they are peer-reviewed.

3. Format of the proposal

All proposals should include the following:

1. A brief curriculum vitae of the contributor(s)
2. A statement of the contributor's general views on editorial principles
3. A statement of the main editorial challenges involved in working with the specific text
4. A statement of the way an electronic edition of the play might differ from the printed text
5. A summary of the kinds of supporting materials that will be linked to the edition (sources, historical documents, and so on)
6. A "timeline" for the completion of the project. 

Note:

• that the electronic medium allows for incremental publication as work is completed (it also allows for the progressive correction of errors as they are detected);
• that deadlines for the print version of the edition will of necessity be more rigorous than for the electronic edition;
• that collation and work on the old-spelling transcriptions should be completed before the modern text is created. Editors will receive a template for the modern text generated from the old-spelling transcription, with tagging in place.

A reasonable timeline will specify dates of completion for the main components of the edition

• The old-spelling transcription(s).
• Collations.
• The modern-spelling text.
• Annotations. These might be done as level one annotations, or both levels at the same time.
• Introductory essays.
• Supplementary materials.
• An indication of the expertise of the contributor(s) in the use of electronic texts and the Internet.
• While different works will require proposals of differing detail, the overall length of the proposal should not exceed 4,000 words, though additional materials may be submitted as appendices or posted as web pages.