ECAI Publication Submission Guidelines

ECAI welcomes submissions of scholarly digital projects that pertain to the history or culture of any place in the world. ECAI publications must contain spatial data capable of being georeferenced, and a related authored text. Temporal coverage for the spatial data is highly recommended.

There are several types of ECAI publications. Many publications have aspects of each of these types. Please use this list as a reference.

• Datasets: Publications may be centered around a single, rich dataset that includes spatial data and extensive related attributes. Examples are historical GIS, gazetteers, or georeferenced demographic data.
• Authored atlases: Publications may be comprised of a number of layers of GIS data and analysis packaged together to address a thesis, showcase a collection, or teach a course. An atlas may address a theme, such as the rise of Buddhism in East Asia, or a place, such as a city or an empire.
• Resources in spatial context: The map-based portion of a publication may be a portal into related resources: a digital museum collection of images, an authored monograph, a digital library collection of texts. In this case, objects on a map browser are linked to additional web-based material.
  

Prior to submitting a complete project, authors are requested to send a detailed prospectus and sample content addressing the following questions:

• Overview: What is the premise of the proposed publication? What is being presented, proven, or documented? Why is the publication being proposed in digital rather than conventional form? What is its intellectual contribution? What type of publication is it?
• Scope: What are the proposed components of the project? In particular, please describe both the content and the information technology for any components of the following types:
  • Spatial and other datasets
  • Authored manuscripts
  • Primary sources: texts, images, raster maps
  • Web components: websites, data-driven web applications, web tools
  • Base framework or contextual data
• Documentation: What are the plans for content and technical documentation? ECAI publications are expected to meet the following standards:
  • Datasets, authored texts, and other components of the publication are expected to meet established disciplinary standards regarding footnoting, bibliographies, explanation of how conclusions have been reached, assessment of data uncertainty, etc.
  • Technical documentation should describe all of the software used in the proposed publication, and any decisions that affect components of the publication such as rectification of data, image correction, etc.
  • Persistence documentation should describe the likely stability of the data, the platform, and the server that it will be housed on. Publications should minimize external links to the extent feasible. Any external links and their likely stability should be described in the persistence documentation.
• Please refer to the ECAI Publication Design Guide for additional assistance in structuring your prospectus. For information about the ECAI publication process and the support that you can expect from ECAI's technical associates and editorial board if your project is accepted, please see the ECAI Publication Process Guide

ECAI expects all publications to be free and publicly available for scholarly use. Authors who wish to publish with ECAI must be willing to make their work available on a web server and to register all metadata associated with the publication in the ECAI Metadata Clearinghouse. Authors must be able to demonstrate that they have acquired legal rights to disseminate all components of their proposed publications on the internet.