The Biblissima Collection at Presses Universitaires de Caen

Objectives

• to disseminate scientific findings arising from individual or collaborative research;
• to promote the methods, tools and standards used for the analysis, representation and promotion of heritage corpora;
• to foster dialogue between disciplines: history, philology, codicology, linguistics, archaeology, literature, computer science, data science, library and information science, etc.;
• to support open science by ensuring open access to digital versions of publications and by encouraging the reuse of associated data and code.

The scientific scope

The collection covers the study of written and iconographic heritage from antiquity to the early modern period, a period marked, at different times depending on the culture, by the spread of the printed word:

• the production, circulation and reception of texts;
• book and written materials (manuscripts, printed books, inscriptions, archives, hybrid documents);
• practices of annotation, editing and description;
• digital tools for processing and analysis (data modelling, artificial intelligence, text recognition, alignment, visualisation, etc.);
• the challenges of the long-term preservation and interoperability of heritage resources. 

Audiences

The collection is primarily aimed at a specialist academic audience (researchers, engineers, librarians, PhD students), but also seeks to reach heritage professionals (libraries, archives, museums) and teachers interested in the digital dissemination of knowledge. Some volumes may be of interest to a much wider audience, in order to support the knowledge-sharing initiative that Biblissima aims to promote.

Types of publications

The collection welcomes:

• individual or collective monographs;
• methodological works or technical guides;
• thematic collective works (conference proceedings, project reports, interdisciplinary overviews, works for the general public);
• where appropriate, annotated corpora or enriched editions where the digital or methodological dimension is central.

To highlight the diversity of approaches, the collection is organised into sub-sections:

• Methods: works on digital tools, protocols, standards and practices (editing, annotation, alignment, AI, data modelling, etc.);
• Studies: interdisciplinary research involving digital approaches to address issues in the humanities;
• Data: lessons learned on the creation, enrichment and publication of corpora or documentary collections;
• Proceedings: collective summary volumes produced following study days, conferences or seminars organised by the Biblissima+ community;
• Knowledge sharing.

Books may be multilingual.

The Biblissima certification

Submissions are reviewed by a Biblissima certification committee, composed of the collection’s founders and leading figures from the academic world, which ensures that the proposed work fits within the scope of the collection. This Biblissima certification committee is managed by CRAHAM and the MRSH in Caen, by virtue of their close relationship with Presses Universitaires de Caen (PUC), which publishes the Biblissima Collection.

At the launch of the collection, this committee is composed of: 

• Pierre-Yves Buard, directeur du Pôle Document Numérique (PDN) de la MRSH de Caen
• Charlotte Denoël, membre du CS de Biblissima+, Directrice du service des manuscrits médiévaux au Département des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Edward Pinot Gray, Officer for National Coordination (DARIAH-EU) et Chargé de recherche Infrastructures à l’IR* Huma-Num
• Marie-Agnès Lucas-Avenel, directrice-adjointe du CRAHAM (Caen) et de Biblissima+, professeure de langue et littérature latines à l’Université de Caen Normandie
• Emmanuelle Morlock, directrice-adjointe de Biblissima+, ingénieur de recherche en humanités numériques au laboratoire HiSoMA, Lyon
• Laurent Pugin, membre du CS de Biblissima+, co-directeur du centre suisse du Répertoire international des sources musicales (RISM), responsable du développement de l’infrastructure digitale et des contacts internationaux
• Matteo Romanello, membre du CS de Biblissima+, Senior Data Engineer à l’Université de Zurich, Swiss Art Research Infrastructure (SARI)
• Anne-Marie Turcan-Verkerk, AOROC, directrice de Biblissima+

Independent scientific peer review and the publishing process at PUC

Once approved, the work undergoes an independent double-blind scientific and editorial review organised by the PUC; see the PUC submission procedure and the publication guidelines at this address. The selection of works is therefore based on peer review and editorial assessment, ensuring the scientific and editorial quality of the collection.

The PUC issues major or minor recommendations, which it communicates to the authors and the Biblissima certification committee.

The editorial standards are those of the PUC: https://www.puc-ed.fr/info/?fa=text41.

The preparation of the volumes is handled by the Pôle Document numérique (PDN) at the MRSH in Caen (Tiphaine Théroux), in accordance with the PUC’s structured editing standards.

Formats and publication

The works are published both in print (through the PUC’s distributor, in accordance with the distributor’s schedule for registering and releasing the works) and as open-access digital versions on the OpenEdition platform.

The publisher’s PDF may be uploaded to HAL upon publication.

Each volume may be accompanied by a companion website or supplementary resources (datasets, visualisations, code, technical documentation), ensuring the reproducibility and dissemination of results in accordance with FAIR principles.