Drama Editions:
Call for Reviews (English)

The Institute for Documentology and Scholarly Editing (IDE) invites scholars to contribute reviews to a special issue of RIDE: A Review Journal for Scholarly Digital Editions and Resources, focusing on digital scholarly editions of dramatic texts and related theatrical materials.

Computer-assisted analysis of dramatic texts has been attracting scholarly attention for quite some time. This sustained interest has not only fueled academic discourse but also led to the development and systematic organization of digital collections of dramatic texts. These efforts are closely aligned with broader trends in the Digital Humanities, and more specifically with the field of Computational Literary Studies, where the emergence of ‘Computational Drama Analysis’ has established a focused research area concerned with modeling, analyzing, and interpreting drama through computational methods. Thereby, one reason for the continuing and growing interest lies in the unique nature of dramatic texts themselves. As Melanie Andresen and Nils Reiter note in the introduction to their eponymous anthology: “Compared to other literary genres, dramatic texts have unique characteristics that make them both well-suited and challenging for quantitative and formal methods” (Andresen and Reiter 2024).

Within the domain of Digital Editing, however, scholarly editions of plays are relatively rare, and from both methodological and conceptual standpoints, editions of drama have received comparatively little critical engagement. Plays are inherently performative texts, designed for live performance, shaped by audience interaction, and deeply embedded in the institutional and cultural frameworks of the theater. Their transmission and interpretation are, therefore, uniquely dynamic and multifaceted. On this point—that “dramatic texts are (often, not always) intended to be performed on stage”—it was also noted that this “adds an additional layer to the text that is very difficult to access computationally, as a reader’s experience may drastically differ from that of an audience in a live theater” (Andresen and Reiter 2024). Yet this very quality makes dramatic texts ideal candidates for digitally supported editorial methods. Digital editions—by their very nature—are equipped to offer multidimensional and media-rich approaches to texts. They can reveal the layered complexity of dramatic works in ways that print editions cannot, making them especially well-suited for addressing the specific editorial challenges posed by drama.

Despite this potential, the field has so far offered little guidance on how best to approach drama as a genre in digital scholarly editing, neither in terms of editorial methodology nor in exploring the theatricality of plays through visual or interface design.

To address this gap, this special issue aims to highlight exemplary editing practices, examine genre-specific encoding and presentation strategies, and contribute to the standardization and further development of this emerging area.

Reviewers are invited to evaluate editions within one of the following categories:

i. Editions of dramatic texts: Digital scholarly editions that focus exclusively on plays.

ii. Multigenre or author-centric editions: Editions that include dramatic texts alongside other literary genres, such as prose or poetry. These may be reviewed either with a focus on the dramatic components specifically or through a comparative analysis of editorial practices across genres within the same project.

iii. Editions of theatrical materials: Digital editions of materials such as promptbooks, rehearsal notes, and playbills, which illuminate the production and performance contexts of dramatic works.

Besides general criteria for reviewing digital editions, as formulated in the Catalog of Criteria by the IDE, reviews should assess, among other aspects, the use of encoding standards (e.g., the TEI P5 Drama Module), the depth and precision of annotations, the quality of the critical apparatus (if present), and the presence of features that enhance user engagement with the text.

Submission Details

Before beginning a review, prospective reviewers are kindly asked to contact us via email at ride-drama@i-d-e.de, indicating the edition they wish to review and providing a brief statement of their affiliation and area of expertise. This helps avoid duplicate reviews and potential conflicts of interest. We also encourage contributors to consult the list of projects currently under review, available at: https://ride.i-d-e.de/reviewers/projects-currently-under-review/.

The deadline for proposals is 31.10.2025. The articles will be published on a rolling basis throughout 2026. The issue will be edited by Erik Renz (University of Rostock).

Reviews may be written in English or German.

Please submit your review as an editable text file, preferably in DOCX format, to facilitate conversion into TEI. Each submission must include a brief abstract in English, regardless of the language of the main text. Images should be provided as separate PNG files, with clearly marked placeholders in the text (e.g., picture-1.png).

All contributors should consult the RIDE writing guidelines and submission guidelines before submitting a review.

Upon final submission, authors are required to complete a RIDE questionnaire corresponding to the type of resource under review. A dedicated questionnaire for scholarly editions is available at: https://ride.i-d-e.de/data/questionnaires/.

Founded in 2014, RIDE has provided for over a decade a platform for evaluating digital scholarly editions. It is an open-access journal; reviews are published in HTML and PDF and can also be downloaded in TEI format.

RIDE aims to publish reviews that meet the standards of peer-reviewed journal articles. Therefore, all submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review process to ensure academic quality. All published content will be released under the CC BY 4.0 license. There are no fees associated with submission, processing, or publication.

Suggestions for Reviews

The following is a non-exhaustive, alphabetical list of digital editions that may be suitable for review within the context of the planned issue:

In addition to these suggestions, we welcome proposals for other editions, provided they align with the thematic scope of this issue. Please note that works currently under review are not eligible. Reviews of editions that have already been discussed in previous RIDE issues (e.g., the Faustedition) may also be submitted, provided that the focus—beyond any changes made since the first review—lies especially on drama-specific aspects of the edition.