The Programming Historian is an OA journal that publishes novice-friendly, peer-reviewed tutorials that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate research and teaching. Every lesson is published in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.

What does it offer you?

The Programming Historian offers the ability to teach yourself new skills within the world of the digital humanities.  Every tutorial is rigorously peer reviewed to make sure it is accessible to newcomers and is judged by external reviewers.  The process also gives scholars the option to learn from each other as the peer review is conceived as a collaborative and productive process.  The Programming Historian publishes all contributions according to the concept of Gold Open Access which means a lesson is freely available without having to pay a subscription fee or experiencing any other restriction on access. Furthermore, authors do not need to pay a publishing fee (Article Processing Charge or APC).  Every submission is published under a Creative commons ‘CC-BY’ license so that anyone can republish the work, as long as they cite the author correctly. As The Programming Historian is a strong believer of giving everyone the ability to benefit from the tutorials, lessons make use of open source programming languages and software as much as possible.  This way, everyone has access to the necessary software, even without an extensive research budget.

How can you contribute?

Though writing a new lesson is the best way to actively engage with the digital humanities community through The Programming Historian, it’s not the only way you can contribute.  Their policy tries to offer the greatest possible level of participation.  You can join the editorial board to edit lessons or, if you’re fluent in one of the languages they offer, you are invited to get in touch about translating.  Even simple feedback is very welcome.

The Programming Historian is an international project driven by volunteers and supported by individual and institutional supporters.  KU Leuven Libraries Artes funds the project through the institutional partnership program.