Contribution Guidelines

What Kinds of Contributions Are a Good Fit For This Edition?

This text has a series of motivating objectives that we’ve outlined in the section titled “What Are The Goals of This Critical Edition?” We welcome contributions that take many different media forms, from traditional essays to songs to vlogs (and beyond).

We make decisions about which contributions are a good fit for this text based on how effectively they support one or more of the project’s motivating objectives. In our communications, we will be transparent with you about the elements of a written essay that contribute to, or in some cases detract from, the project learning objectives. We truly want to include you in this text and to work together to help make this possible.

The section “Using Primary and Secondary Sources for Your Research” provides guidance and additional information about the kinds of resources that are most appropriate to cite in a collaborative critical edition of this type.

Contribution Process

If you’d like to add your work to the collection, please send it to me by email at the following address: nsalmon [at] wisc [dot] edu.

Please include the following:

• Your name and follow-up contact information (ideally a preferred email address). If you’re sharing a piece of writing composed collaboratively, please provide contact information for each writer.
• A note stating if you’d prefer this contribution to be included in the under your full name(s), under a pseudonym, or anonymously. Feel free to make up a silly pseudonym if you’d like.
• If anyone supported you in your research process and you feel they would be comfortable being recognized in this space, please share their names as well. (For instance, you may have brainstormed with an instructor, archivist, librarian, colleague, or mentor.) We all stand on the shoulders of others, and those others deserve to be celebrated!
• Optional: I’d also love to know whether you wrote this as part of a class, book group, or simply because of personal interest.

Finally, please specify which license you would like to attach to your work. 

We also ask that the material submitted for inclusion in this project carries an open license that allows others to rehost and repurpose this material.

We would like instructors, students, and other folks to be able to teach with or remix this text in ways that best suit their learning needs, and the licenses that make this the most feasible are CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution) licenses.

CC-BY licenses allow for the following:

• If someone was interested in translating your piece to use in a French or Swahili version of this textbook, a CC-BY license would permit them to do so.
• If someone in the future makes a new historical discovery or debunks an old theory you cite, a later contributor might add an addendum to your piece to include the updated information. As always, you’d receive credit as the original author, but a later contributor’s ability to expand your piece would allow them to make sure this text reflects the most recent information available!^[1]

This said, if you are most comfortable sharing your work in another capacity, we are also willing to consider contributions that bear other forms of open licenses. Some examples of these are CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial), CC-BY-SA (Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike), and CC-BY-ND (Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivatives). I’m happy to talk with you more about this if you have questions.

Keep in mind that in all of these cases, you will receive attribution for all of your hard work in every iteration of this text that includes your contributions. Granting an open license doesn’t mean giving up your work willy-nilly, rather, it means that others may use it in a variety of ways that suit different audiences’ learning goals.

Here’s what my follow-up will look like:

• I’ll reply by email as soon as I am able to do so. (This may take me a few extra days during midterms and finals season, but I’ll do my best respond as quickly as possible–I appreciate your work and your generosity in sharing it.) If I’m not able to provide a response to your writing right away, I will reply to let you know when to expect a fuller response!
• In some cases, I may respond with a few clarification questions. In situations where you are making a historical claim and the research context of this claim is unclear, I may also make suggestions about how to align your contribution with some of the conventions of a teaching text. (See below.)

Contribution Qualities

For more information about the qualities that represent a well-developed contribution to this text, visit the rubrics in the “Assessing Contribution Strengths and Development Areas” section of this volume.

Thank you for taking part! It’s an honor to have you join us.