BJHS Themes is a collaborative venture between the British Society for the History of Science and Cambridge University Press aimed at establishing the first fully open access journal for the history of science community.

Three core principles underline our open access commitment:

• All articles will be free to access online by anybody from the date of publication, in final form and in perpetuity, through Cambridge Journals Online.
• All articles will be published under the terms of a Creative Commons licence chosen by the author, making provision for open re-use and distribution.
• No author, regardless of their funding background or institutional affiliation, will face any financial barrier to publication.

These open access principles will be adopted for BJHS Themes without the need to forego any of the critical features the history of science community might expect from a leading scholarly journal:

• A traditional, rigorous, pre-publication peer-review process.
• International promotion through the auspices of a major university press.
• Technically innovative and accessible online publication through an established platform.
• Digital preservation and secure archiving of all published material.
• A professional, efficient production service in print and online.

We invite all scholars of the history of science to engage with this exciting new project, whether by reading its articles or by putting together a volume proposal for the annual competition.

Funding publication

The British Society for the History of Science, in cooperation with Cambridge University Press, has established a support fund to finance the publication of any article accepted by the editors. This has been made possible in part by the Wheeler bequest, a generous gift to the Society that came with the stipulation that the sum should go towards the building of a library. In these days of electronic media, we see BJHS Themes as an excellent, forward-looking and sensible way to fulfil this wish. We are committed to ensuring that no author is prevented from publishing in an open access environment by any financial barriers; all are encouraged to contribute.

To help assure the long-term sustainability of BJHS Themes and extend the life of the Wheeler bequest we ask any scholar with access to open access funding, through their institution or funding body, to pay an Article Processing Charge of £2,045/$3,255. This represents a realistic assessment of the actual costs of publication incurred by the BSHS and Cambridge University Press per article published. This is of particular relevance to those scholars funded by the Wellcome Trust, RCUK and other funding bodies that have made funding available in support of open access publishing of this kind. However, it should be reiterated that the availability of any such funding will have no bearing on editorial decisions, which shall be made solely on academic merit.

For the avoidance of doubt, there is no submission fee for this journal.

Article re-use: Creative Commons

All BJHS Themes articles will be published under Creative Commons licences – guaranteeing a minimum level of open re-use rights for every published item – but the author will have a choice as to which version to adopt. BJHS Themes will offer three forms of the Creative Commons licence:

Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY)

Articles may be shared, adapted, copied and redistributed in any medium and format for any commercial or non-commercial purpose. Credit must be given to the original version, including an articulation of any changes made in the adapted version. Full details are available here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA)

Articles may be shared, copied and redistributed in any medium and format. They may also be adapted. However, appropriate credit must be given to the original version, including a clear articulation of the changes made in the adapted version; the new version must not be exploited for commercial purposes; and the new version must itself be made available subject to the same CC-BY-NC-SA terms. Full details are available here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC-BY-NC-ND)

Articles may be shared, copied and redistributed in any medium and format, but may not be adapted. Appropriate credit must be given to the original version and the new version may not be exploited for commercial purposes. Full details are available here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Any questions concerning BJHS Themes may be directed to the BJHS Themes General Editor, Jahnavi Phalkey (Themes_editor@bengaluru.sciencegallery.com).

Click here to return to Author Instructions.