Full Prospectus Guidelines
When you submit a Formal Prospectus to Computers & Composition Digital Press, it will be reviewed by members of our Editorial Board. This review generally takes up to twelve weeks and authors will be informed of the Editors’ decision as soon as possible after the reviews are returned.
To submit a formal prospectus for editorial consideration, authors should share their documents via email and a file transfer program such as Dropbox.
A formal prospectus should include the following sections:
- Introduction, Overview, and Rationale: Briefly describe the scholarly book—no more than two single-spaced pages.
- Context: Place the born digital book within the context of an academic field and the key conversations taking place therein. Place it in relation to existing books or projects that have attempted similar work. You need to show how your book will be both similar and different from work that already exists.
- Target Audience(s): Which audiences will your scholarly book attract? For whom is it written?
- Annotated Table of Contents: Brief description of each chapter or major section of your proposed book.
- References/Works Cited: Works you’ve cited in your prospectus and sample chapters.
- Expected Completion Date: When can we expect to review the full, revised scholarly book?
- Curriculum Vitae: Your educational and professional background.
- Sample Chapters or Sections: Please include at least two sample chapters or sections of your digital scholarly book (along with any instructions that readers might need to access this content).
- Possible Reviewers for your project: Please list names, affiliations, full postal addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses in a separate file not attached to your prospectus.
- Technical Specifications/Considerations: In this section, please identify your plans for content formats, digital genres, technical specifications or considerations that might assist the CCDP editors in better understanding your project and its requirements.
As far as possible, CCDP conducts blind reviews of submitted books. However, CCDP understands that the nature of some books may preclude a review that is completely blind for both Press editors and project authors (for example, edited collections are generally submitted to presses with a list of authors who have agreed to contribute). Similarly, the nature of digital texts, genres, files, and projects may make completely blind reviews unreasonable, difficult, or even impossible (some video content, for example, may be impossible to render anonymous). In such cases, authors should feel free to consult the editors in advance if they have questions or concerns about a particular book. On the editorial end of our operation, the Press will make every effort to avoid revealing the names of editorial reviewers to authors.
Once completed born digital books are accepted for publication by CCDP, authors will be asked to submit their project to the editorial staff. If CCDP pursues publication of your book, you will be asked to submit a Publishing Agreement signed by the author and attesting that all work within the project is original or formally cleared for copyright and/or Creative Commons’ licensing restrictions. Also included should be scanned copies of all signed copyright permission forms or Creative Commons licenses for non-original content.