Aestimatio Sources and Studies in the History of Science
Managing editor(s): Pamela A. Cooper (Publications Manager) / Editor(s): Alan Bowen (Editor), Francesca Rochberg (Editor), Stamatina Mastorakou (Book Review Editor)
About
Aestimatio: Sources and Studies in the History of Science focuses on the history of science from antiquity to the early modern period. This chronological span is complemented by a geo-cultural one that takes into account cultures in Eurasia and Africa, recognizing that the spread of the traditions of knowledge and of ideas is a unifying characteristic of the chronological and geo-cultural scope of science in the Old World before the modern era.
In Aestimatio, we take science broadly to be the goals, methods, knowledge, and practices in what is presented as science in the historical sources. Accordingly, this new series of Aestimatio aims to make fundamental texts and ideas in the history of science accessible to readers today through the publication of original research. It will also include assessments of books recently published that allow reviewers to engage critically with the methods and results of current research. On occasion, there will be guest-edited thematic issues and supplementary volumes.
Aestimatio: Critical Reviews in the History of Science was launched in 2004 by the Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science (IRCPS). A companion series, Interpretatio: Sources and Studies in the History of Science, was inaugurated in 2016. These two series were then amalgamated and redesigned in 2020 as Aestimatio: Sources and Studies in the History of Science.
Open access
As the earlier series, Aestimatio (new series) provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
Aestimatio is owned and published by the Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science (IRCPS.org).
Contact
Principal Contact
Back issues (6 issues)
Permanent archiving of articles on Érudit is provided by Portico.
Editorial policy and ethics
Journal policies
The IRCPS is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and to supporting ethical research practices. So far as it is practicable and appropriate, our practices are aligned with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers, the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors, and the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.
The IRCPS and the editors of Aestimatio consider all forms plagiarism and infringement of copyright a serious offence. All items to be published Aestimatio must include proper acknowledgements in the house-style. In cases of plagiarism, the editors reserve the right to decline to publish the work in question or to retract the work if it has been published. In retracting a work, the journal will follow the guidelines set out by COPE, in addition to putting a notice specifying the retracted work (title and author(s)) and the reasons for its retraction on the its website.
COPE recommendations when plagiarism is suspected in a manuscript:
• before publication
• after publication.
Peer review process
All articles and discussions submitted to Aestimatio are subject to single-blind peer review; all reviews of books, to Editorial review. The Editors reserve the right to decline to publish items submitted to Aestimatio.
Submitting (articles, discussions, and reviews)
All submissions should be made by email with two digital files as attachments. One file should be a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file; and the second, a .pdf file, which we will consult in addressing questions of layout and format.
All articles and diuscussions should be addressed to one of the Editors, either Alan C. Bowen (bowen@IRCPS.org) or Francesca Rochberg (rochberg@berkeley.edu).
All reviews should be addressed to the Book Review Editor, Stamatina Mastorakou (smastorakou@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de).
Memorandum of agreement (copyright and license)
All contributors of works accepted for publication in Aestimatio must sign a memorandum of agreement stipulating that:
• the contributor retains copyright in the work.
• the contributor grants to the IRCPS a limited exclusive license for publication, and
• the contributor agrees not to publish his or her submission elsewhere in the same form, in any language, without the consent of the IRCPS and without acknowledgment of the work’s original publication in Aestimatio, for a period of one year after the date of its original publication.
Aestimatio (new series) is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For details, see creativecommons.org/licenses/.
The IRCPS and the editors of Aestimatio consider all forms plagiarism and infringement of copyright a serious offence. All items to be published Aestimatio must include proper acknowledgements in the house-style. In cases of plagiarism, the editors reserve the right to decline to publish the work in question or to retract the work if it has been published. In retracting a work, the journal will follow the guidelines set out by COPE, in addition to putting a notice specifying the retracted work (title and author(s)) and the reasons for its retraction on the its website.
COPE recommendations when plagiarism is suspected in a manuscript:
• before publication
• after publication.
Information for contributors
Memorandum of agreement (copyright and license)
All contributors of works accepted for publication in Aestimatio must sign a memorandum of agreement stipulating that:
• the contributor retains copyright in the work.
• the contributor grants to the IRCPS a limited exclusive license for publication, and
• the contributor agrees not to publish his or her submission elsewhere in the same form, in any language, without the consent of the IRCPS and without acknowledgment of the work’s original publication in Aestimatio, for a period of one year after the date of its original publication.
Aestimatio (new series) is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For details, see creativecommons.org/licenses/.
Author Guidelines
Preparation of files (Style-Guide) for all contributors
The style guide for all contributors to Aestimatio is available for download as a Word Document or PDF.
FONT
It is important that all contributors use a Unicode font in preparing their articles.
LANGUAGES
Aestimatio covers a great number of different languages and cultures. Given that our aim is to address our fellow scholars who may not be familiar with them as well as advanced graduate students, we have adopted the following policy:
(a) Greek
Contributors should avoid transliteration. We ask instead that they use a judicious mixture of translation and the original Greek.
(b) Arabic and so forth
Original scripts should be used only when necessary. In general, Arabic should be transliterated using the following system: ’, b, t, th, j, ḥ, kh, d, dh, r, z, s, sh, ṣ, ḍ, ṭ, ẓ, ‛, gh, f, q, k, l, m, n, h, w, y.
Note: The article should not be assimilated: al-nafs and not an-nafs; wa-al-kitāb and not wa-l-kitāb; Abū al-Qāsim and not Abū-l-Qāsim.
In instances when presentation of the original text is important or necessary, please consult the editors concerning which Unicode font to use.
THE TEXT
Authors should distinguish between the:
hyphen
en-dash (option+hyphen and no spaces) for use between numbers
em-dash (option+shift+hyphen and no spaces) for interjections
minus sign (en-dash with one space on either side, no space after, when indicating a negative number)
Use the following:
- footnotes, not endnotes
- hyphens for compound words in cases where the absence of a hyphen is not well established in common usage (check the Oxford Dictionary of American English).
Avoid the use of boldface—use either a roman or an italic typeface.
QUOTATION MARKS
Use only double quotation (“, ”) marks in English and Latin text, and guillemets for text in an inflected language.
Quotations (of terms and phrases in either inflected or non-inflected languages) will contain concluding commas and periods only when the material in quotation constitutes a complete sentence. Thus, e.g.,
...“the Man in the Moon”,
...declare “It exists.”
Distinguish too the use of a term and its mention. The latter should be in quotation marks. E.g.,
The cat is on the mat.
The word “cat” occurs in the sentence “The cat is on the mat.”
NUMERALS AND NUMBER-WORDS
Use numerals for 10 and above
But in a given sentence, if 10 or above appears in a given category, use numerals for all numbers in that category.
E.g., “The Mechanism survives in 5 large fragments and some 77 smaller ones...”
- measure. E.g.,
1 time-degree is equal to 4 minutes, 18 in, 44 mm day 1 of the month Nisannu synodic periods 1, 2, 3.
DIVISION OF THE TEXT
Authors are encouraged to articulate their articles by dividing them into sections when feasible.
Each article will have proper footnotes (not endnotes) and a bibliography of works cited.
Citations will in the main follow the author/ year convention (samples are provided below). This convention may, however, be supplemented by a list of abbreviations to be used for various series of publications.
In general, the only citations in the body text will be those of pre-modern authors. The exception will be the citations of secondary sources at the end of block quotations. All other citations should be put in footnotes.
ABBREVIATIONS
We ask that contributors be sparing in their use of such abbreviations so that we do not annoy readers with alphabet soup. Moreover, please do not abbreviate the names of the authors of pre-modern and modern texts, only their works.
For a list of abbreviations commonly used, see the
- The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek
- Oxford Latin Dictionary and https://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/abbreviations_for_assyriology.
IMAGES
We expect that this volume will have line drawings and a few images (perhaps of manuscripts, if that would be useful in discussion of a given text).
- (a) For those preparing line drawings, we ask that they use serif Unicode font to label elements of the drawings and send us PDF files for the drawings.
- (b) Contributors wishing to include images in their chapters should send us these images as JPG or PNG files at 600 dpi or better and as PDF files.
In both instances, we encourage our authors to submit drawings with colored lines (e.g., red for the ecliptic, blue for the celestial equator, green for the horizon circle) and color images when this is feasible. We can always turn them into grayscale if that proves to be necessary.
PERMISSION
(a) The decision about which images to include ultimately lies with the editors and will be made mainly with an eye to the their importance to the reader’s understanding of the argument.
(b) We do not have funds to support the acquisition of permission to reprint or publish images. This means that the burden of securing permission to publish a given image folders falls entirely and solely on the contributor who wishes to publish it.
(c) Written notice of this permission should be included among the files sent to the editors when the chapter is submitted.
CITATIONS
The following illustrate the method of citation that we will adopt in Aestimatio.
Primary sources (in body text and footnotes)
For such authors as Plato and Aristotle, all modern editions are keyed to an edition made centuries ago. Thus, to cite their works, it will suffice to give citations in the format: AncientAuthorName, ShortTitle page.line-numbers
E.g., Aristotle, Phys. 2.193b22–35. Plato, Tim. 39a5–c4.
Euclid, Elem. 5.prop 2.
For other ancient authors, please cite the edition used when giving line numbers. Thus,
Ptolemy, Can. man. 17.
Heiberg, 1898–1910, 2.176.6–9.
The general pattern for such citations is Author Year, volume.page.line-number–page.line-number
Manuscripts are cited according to the following format: MS + location, library, catalogue entry, folios E.g., MS Istanbul, Süleymaniye, Carullah 1279, ff. 63r – 65v
Secondary sources (in footnotes)
(a) See Author Year, pages.
(b) ..., as was the case in Rome [Author Year, 201–203].
(c) ..., as was not the case in Babylon [Author Year, 1.56.14–17]
(d) ...the Kugler Globe [Author 2018, 157 pl. 5]
CITATIONS IN BIBLIOGRAPHY
The bibliography will be divided into 2 sections: one for Primary Sources and one for Secondary Sources. In general, there will be no subtitles no series titles, and only the city of publication will be included.
Primary Sources in the Bibliography
The basic pattern is: Ancient AuthorName, Title. See ModernEditorA Year; ModernEditorB Year.
For collections of primary sources, e.g., a collection on cuneiform texts:
Craig, J. A. 1895–1897. Assyrian and Babylonian Religious Texts. 2 vols. Leipzig.
Secondary Sources in the Bibliography
- Articles in journals
Van Riel, G. 2001. “Horizontalism or Verticalism? Proclus vs Plotinus on the Procession of Matter”. Phronesis 46: 129–153.
- Articles in edited volumes
Pingree, D. 1981. “History of Mathematical Astronomy in India”. Pp. 533–633 in C. C. Gillespie ed. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. vol. 15. New York.
- Books
Grmek, M. 1989. Diseases in the Ancient Greek World. Baltimore, MD.
Martijn, M. 2010. Proclus on Nature. Leiden.
- Dissertations
Czinczenheim, C. 2000. Édition, traduction et commentaire des Sphériques de Théodose. PhD dissertation, University of Paris 4 (Sorbonne). Paris.
- Edited books
Diels, H. and W. Kranz. 1956. edd. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 6th edn. 3 vols. Berlin.
Gerzymisch-Arbogast, H.; C. Heine and C. Schubert. 2006. edd. Text and Translation. Tubingen.
Checklist for submission
In digital format (.rtf, .doc, or .docx and .pdf):
- ___ text of chapter (including footnotes, bibliography at the end)
- ___ copies of written permissions
Guidelines for Book Reviewers
Thank you again for volunteering to be a reviewer for Aestimatio. To be most effective, your review should locate the book in relation to research in the field, address critically the question of its methods, and comment on some of its key results. It is important to bear in mind that reviews in Aestimatio are not bound by extrinsic questions of length. Indeed, you are free to engage the book critically in a manner and at a length that you think will be useful to our readers.
Preparing reviews
Please remember that our readers, though perhaps expert in some area of the history of science, may well be unfamiliar with the particular subject of the book that you are reviewing and how it bears on the ideas and practices of science before the early modern period. Please remember as well that reviews may have consequences in the long term; and that while disagreements may be serious and important, reviewers should avoid inflammatory language and aim for criticism that is fair, balanced, respectful, and focused on the work written, not on the author.
In matters of style, we ask that you consult our Style-Guide for All Contributors. If you cite modern works and editions, note that Aestimatio has adopted the author- year system that includes a proper bibliography. Please note: with the latest changes in our typesetting software, we can now read accented characters and non-Roman scripts directly from a source file. Accordingly, we ask that you use a suitable Unicode font in preparing your review. If you have any questions about the review or run into difficulties that will affect the time needed to prepare the review, please advise me as soon as possible.
Submitting reviews
Please submit reviews by means of an email message to Stamatina Mastorakou, (smastorakou@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de) with two digital files as attachments. The first should be a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file; and the second, a .pdf file which we will consult in addressing questions of layout and format.
Stamatina Mastorakou
Book Review Editor
smastorakou@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
Editorial board
EDITORS:
Alan C. Bowen,
Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science
E-Mail: bowen@IRCPS.org
Francesca Rochberg,
University of California Berkeley
E-Mail: rochberg@berkeley.edu
BOOK REVIEW EDITOR:
Stamatina Mastorakou,
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
E-Mail: smastorakou@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
ASSOCIATE EDITORS:
Fabio Acerbi, CNRS, Paris
Peter Barker, University of Oklahoma
Jonathan Ben-Dov, Tel Aviv University
Sonja Brentjes, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Anne-Laurence Caudano, University of Winnipeg
Serafina Cuomo, Durham University
Eduardo A. Escobar, University of Bologna
Y. Tzvi Langermann, Bar Ilan University
Pamela O. Long, Washington, DC
Clemency Montelle, University of Canterbury
Franziska Naether, University of Leipzig
Sophie Page, University College London
John M. Steele, Brown University
Émilie Villey, CNRS, Paris
ADVISORY EDITORS:
Asad Q. Ahmed, University of California Berkeley
Gad Freudenthal, CNRS, Paris
Bernard R. Goldstein, University of Pittsburgh
Richard Kieckhefer, Northwestern University
Michael Lackner, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg
Maria Mavroudi, University of California Berkeley
Robert G. Morrison, Bowdoin College
Vivian Nutton, University College London
Lawrence Principe, Johns Hopkins University
Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University
Anne Tihon, Université Catholique de Louvain
COPY-EDITOR & PROOFREADER
Megan O’Connor,
Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science
PUBLICATION MANAGER:
Pamela A. Cooper,
Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science