About us
History of Ideas Journal
ORBIS IDEARUM
European Journal of the History of Ideas
“Orbis Idearum” is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal devoted to the history of ideas, indexed in important databases such as SCOPUS, DOAJ and ERIH PLUS, and included in the Polish and Italian ministerial lists of scientific journals. It is edited and published by the History of Ideas Research Centre and the Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University. Founded in 2013 by Prof. Michel Kowalewicz, the journal was initially funded by the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland.
Orbis Idearum has an international and interdisciplinary scope, as testified to by its Editorial board and Scientific Committee. It is open access and free of charge for authors and readers. Full issues and single articles are published online on this journal's website.
Prior to submitting a manuscript for peer review, authors are required to register with the journal and they are invited to review the journal’s
Ethical Code,
Methodological Guide and
Editorial Norms.
Articles should be crafted using the Publishing templates provided by the editors on this journal.
The history of ideas can be understood as a discipline with its own methodology and field of inquiry, or as an umbrella discipline that encompasses the histories of specific types of knowledge, such as philosophy, social science, natural science, religion, literature, etc. Typically, the focus of the history ideas is the historical trajectory of a term-and-concept or a theory. Researchers may reconstruct the vicissitudes of intradisciplinary ideas (sociological, philosophical, political, etc.) or of ideas crossing disciplines or appearing in different forms of literature (scientific articles, books, manuscripts, private letters, novels, etc.). It must be clear, however, that this is just a general orientation. There are different traditions and schools of thought in the history of ideas. The editors and reviewers of Orbis Idearum are not “fundamentalist” about research approaches. However, they do require methodological awareness from the authors.
A specific feature of the journal is the attention paid to the social contexts in which ideas develop, spread, and vanish. This specificity blurs the distinction between the history of ideas and the sociology of knowledge. Indeed, the founder of the latter, Karl Mannheim, defined Wissenssoziologie in Ideology and Utopia as “sociological history of ideas.” This explains in part why the journal is housed within the Institute of Sociology of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
The journal accepts original research articles, book reviews, and research reports. It also considers for publication transcriptions of old historical documents, such as handwritten letters and memoires, that are unpublished, provided they are accompanied by a commentary that explains the importance of the document for the history of ideas. Contributions are assessed on the basis of topic suitability, cogency of argumentation, and originality.
Orbis Idearum is a multilingual journal that currently accepts contributions in English, Italian, and Polish. In the past it also published in French and German. Authors interested in submitting contributions in French or German should first contact the editors to make sure that reviewers are available. Any author who is not fully fluent in English, Italian, or Polish (submission languages) is urged to obtain assistance with manuscript preparation from a fluent colleague or from professional editorial services. Manuscripts with considerable language issues can be desk rejected by the editors before peer review.
The journal publishes both special issues and regular issues. Contributions to the regular issues can be submitted in any time, while contributions for the special issues are subjected to the deadlines indicated in the calls for papers. The frequency of Orbis Idearum is biannual.
The editors
Publisher
History of Ideas Research Centre
Editorial Board
Founder
Michel Henri Kowalewicz, Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland)
†
Editor in chief
Riccardo Campa, Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland)
Special Editors
- Piotr Zielonka, Warsaw University of Life Sciences (Poland)
- Lech Witkowski, Pomeranian University in Słupsk (Poland)
Editorial Staff
- Lucas Mazur, Sigmund Freud University in Berlin (Germany)
- Anna Juraschek, University of Regensburg (Germany)
- Dawid Wieczorek, Pedagogical University of Krakow (Poland)
- Konrad Szocik, Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland)
- Krzysztof Krapa, University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland)
- Giulia Fasan, University of Padua (Italy)
- Anastazja Zakusiło, Regional Centre for Social Policy in Krakow (Poland)
- Olga O'Toole, Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland)
Scientific Commitee
- Mariolina Graziosi, University of Milan (Italy)
- Maria Luisa Iavarone, Parthenope University of Neaples (Italy)
- Riccardo Pozzo, National Research Council of Italy - CNR (Italy)
- Gunther Scholtz, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany)
- Karl Acham, University of Graz (Austria)
- Luciano Pellicani, LUISS University in Rome (Italy) †
- Gregorio Piaia, University of Padua (Italy)
- Carole Talon-Hugon, University of Nice (France)
- Tatiana Artemyeva, Herzen University in St. Petersburg (Russia)
- Martine Yvernault, University of Limoges (France)
- Martina Roesner, University of Vienna (Austria)
- Jarosław Górniak, Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland)
- Paweł Dybel, University of Warsaw/Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
- Marcin Król, University of Warsaw (Poland)
- Eric Nelson, University of Massachussets (USA)
- Mara Wade, University of Illinois (USA)
- Sergio Sorrentino, University of Salerno (Italy)
- Han Vermeulen, Max-Planck Institute of Anthropology (Germany)
- Jens Loenhoff, Essen-Duisburg University (Germany)
- Maria Flis, Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland)
- Giuseppe Micheli, University of Padua (Italy)
- Mikhail Mikeshin, St. Petersburg Center for the History of Ideas (Russia)
- Alexander Schwarz, University of Lausanne (Switzerland)
- Victor Kaploun, European University in St. Petersburg (Russia)
- Wiesław Wydra, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland)
- Warren Breckman, University of Pennsylvania (USA)
- Irina Tunkina, Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg (Russia)
- Lech Witkowski, Pomeranian University in Słupsk (Poland)
- Fabio Grigenti, University of Padua (Italy)
- Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, John Cabot University in Rome (Italy)
- Antimo Cesaro, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli in Caserta (Italy)