Open Source Critical Editions

An open source critical edition is a digital text that makes available to the reader all the sources (e.g. manuscript readings) used and allows the reader to manipulate and reuse those sources. OSCEs are in concept extensions of the 19th-century critical edition, in that the editor's decisions are made utterly transparent, and subject to reuse and post-publication peer review. As of July 2012 there are no examples that deploy all the principles outlined by Bodard and Garcés (see below), although a number of projects are intent on working toward this ideal.

Early Conceptions
On Friday, 22 September 2006 a workshop/workgroup organised and supported by Methods Network, Perseus, and the Digital Classicist was held at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London. The programme lists participants and positioning papers. The OSCE Abstract, submitted to the Methods Network committee in July and formally granted funding in August 2006, laid out the vision of the workshop. It was attended by numerous participants.

Other early events included:
 * Collaborative Text Editing: e-Science Theme, June 20, 2007, National e-Science Centre, Edinburgh
 * Changing the center of gravity: the future of classical studies in cyberinfrastructure, October 5, 2007, University of Kentucky, Lexington
 * Million Books Workshop, Imperial College Internet Centre, Friday March 14, 2008, London.