Description:
The Journal for Digital Legal History (DLH) is a diamond Open-Access, peer-reviewed international journal hosted by the Open UGent platform. For our second issue, which will be published in November 2024, we are pleased to invite contributions from researchers working on legal history with digital, empirical and computational approaches. The journal welcomes all research questions and outputs at the intersection of legal history, digital humanities and empirical legal studies, broadly defined.
In the field of legal history, digital methods are hardly ever the centrepiece of a publication itself, if not downplayed. In 1997, Richard Evans claimed that: 'How we know about the past, what historical causation is, how we define a historical fact, whether there is such a thing as historical truth or objectivity - these are questions that most historians have happily left to one side as unnecessary distractions from their essential work in the archives' (R. Evans, In Defence of History, 1997, p. 9). Nevertheless, in the 21st century, the work of a historian or legal scholar does not stop in the archives. Often, digital or computational techniques are applied in seemingly pedestrian ways, such as "searching" full texts, or they are applied in more elaborate methods to transform the historical facts embedded in our precious archival material or legal documents to answer novel research questions or to explore well-trodden paths from an innovative perspective.
The application of digital techniques to legal history research is often overlooked or omitted from discussions on methodology. We encourage you to highlight the technical tools or methods that proved effective in your research projects without neglecting all the trials and errors that helped structure your final choice of any particular technique. You are welcome to illustrate your work with all forms of outputs, from notebooks to graphs, networks, maps, diagrams, etc.. If you have developed software, a database or a dataset that others could reuse, feel welcome to publish it with us.
1. 2024 Call for Contributions: continuous call for submissions
Submissions that address legal sources from any historical period and any part of the world are welcome. We actively encourage collaborative and multi-authored pieces by authors from different countries working across disciplines.
We accept publications in English; we can also support German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, but do contact the editorial board in advance. If you wish to publish in another language than mentioned here, please consult us beforehand.
Beyond the following suggestions, feel free to contact us through the DLH website if you have any original ideas that you want to discuss.
Topic suggestions
Original research articles (up to 10,000 words).
Reproduction pieces: Can the results of classic studies be replicated through DLH techniques?
A dedicated section for your Digital Legal History events: If you are organising a panel, conference, or webinar series that prominently features Digital Humanities performed on legal sources, contact us for a dedicated focus section that will allow you to publish the papers or conclusions of your meeting.
Shorter focus pieces or provocations (around 5,000 words with fewer footnotes).
Conference and seminar reports.
Spotlight articles: inspiration from other social sciences fields on the promising benefits of specific Digital Humanities techniques that could be successfully applied to Digital Legal History.
Presentations or Reviews of software, databases, datasets, websites, and platforms.
Tutorials: general presentation, application through a specific study angle (legal linguistics, marginalia analysis).
Trials & errors: reflections on the productive role of wandering and errors in abandoned, rejected or substantially modified past projects that could help improve the current methodology (inspired by the Journal of Trial & Error).
Formats
We are open to submissions in traditional and non-traditional formats: from traditional articles to blog posts, from plain text to linked data or hyperlinked texts, from posters to Notebooks, etc.. Illustrations could be included in the form of notebooks, graphs, diagrams, maps, networks, and images.
Timeline
Upon receiving your contribution, we aim to publish it within 2-4 months, depending on a positive peer-review. Please send us a short abstract of 150 words, including a provisional title, suggested format and up to five keywords. You can find the detailed guidelines for authors on the journal's website. Please include a short biographical statement for the proposed contributor(s), including the area of expertise, interests, affiliation (if applicable), and any other relevant information. We will respond to all abstract submissions within 14 days (in July and August, this may take a bit longer).
More info: https://openjournals.ugent.be/dlh/
2. Call for Contributions: The Trial and Errors of Grant Applications in Digital Legal History
We are pleased to announce a special call for papers for an upcoming thematic section in the Journal for Digital Legal History. As part of our ongoing commitment to fostering innovation and interdisciplinary dialogue in the field of digital legal history, we invite scholars to submit their successful or failed grant applications that utilize novel methodologies.
In recent years, the intersection of digital humanities, empirical legal studies, network science, and other social sciences has given rise to many innovative research approaches within legal history. However, securing funding for such projects often presents its own set of challenges and opportunities. Through this thematic section, we aim to highlight the grant application process as a crucial aspect of scholarly endeavour in the digital age.
We welcome submissions that explore the following themes:
Methodological Innovation: Successful or failed grant applications that employ novel methodologies in digital legal history research, including but not limited to network analysis, text mining, computational modeling, and data visualization.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Projects that demonstrate interdisciplinary collaboration between legal historians, digital humanists, computer scientists, sociologists, and other relevant disciplines, as reflected in the grant application process.
Ethical Considerations: Grant applications that address ethical considerations and challenges associated with conducting research in digital legal history, such as data privacy, algorithmic bias, and the responsible use of digital tools.
Impact and Outreach: Projects that emphasise the potential impact and broader societal relevance of digital legal history research, as articulated in the grant application's outreach and dissemination strategies.
Submission Guidelines:
Manuscripts can be up to 10.000 words. The methodological section of a grant application will be accepted, as long as an introduction is provided, placing the methodology within the wider context of the research project.
All submissions must adhere to the journal's formatting guidelines, which can be found on our website.
Authors should include a cover letter specifying whether the grant application was successful or unsuccessful and any relevant contextual information.
Submission of your full contribution (of any kind) before September 30th, 2024.
Peer-review reports before November 4th, 2024.
Submission of the final version between November 18th - 25th, 2024.
Appearance on the website – pending positive peer review – two to three weeks after final submission.
3. Call for Contributions: Dedicated "Focus-section: Early Career Digital Legal Historians: Legal History Upside-Down: Novel Methodologies for the History of Law".
We are pleased to invite proposals from researchers and others working with digital legal history in the early stages of their careers for a special section of the Journal for Digital Legal History, which will be published in November 2024. The theme of this section is "Legal History Upside-Down: Novel Methodologies for the History of Law."
Digital techniques are often not explicitly discussed, and we would encourage you to show us which techniques worked for your research - but we are also open to explaining which techniques failed. You are welcome to illustrate your work with e.g. Jupyter notebooks, R scripts, and excel files,. If you have developed software, databases or -sets that others could reuse: feel welcome to publish with us.
Length: Pieces in this section should be 2,500-5,000 words (up to 10,000 words max.). Do also consider alternative formats, such as fully explained Notebooks, posters with additional explanations, linked videos, tutorials, or course outlines.
We accept publications in English; we can also support German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese but do contact the editorial board in advance. If you wish to publish in another language than mentioned here, please consult us beforehand.
More info: https://openjournals.ugent.be/dlh/
Timeline:
Please send an email before July 1st, 2024, with a short proposal (150 words), including a provisional title and suggested format (and length) for your contribution. Please also include a short biographical statement for the proposed contributor(s), including the area of expertise, interests, affiliation (if applicable), and any other relevant information. We will respond to all submissions within 14 days. Mention in the subject line of the contact form to which CfC you are submitting.
Submission of your full contribution (of any kind) before September 30th, 2024.
Peer-review reports before November 4th, 2024.
Submission of the final version between November 18th - 25th, 2024.
Appearance on the website – pending positive peer review – two to three weeks after final submission
