International law spans the globe and, per definition, concerns peoples and nations around the world. Yet, truly transboundary scholarly communication all too often is hampered by legal and technical barriers and obstacles. To overcome some of these hurdles, we look for authors to create the first-ever Open Access textbook in international law in the context of the initiative “OpenRewi”. The aim of the book is to introduce readers to the field of public international law with a focus on the general questions/questions common to all specialized sub-fields. The aim is both to give an overview of the vast body of law and to discuss certain important questions in more detail and provide further references. The targeted audience are both students studying the field for the first time and those who would like to deepen their knowledge.
“OpenRewi” is a Germany-based initiative founded in 2020 with the aim to create freely accessible and reusable teaching materials according to the Open Definition. Several teams working under the umbrella of “OpenRewi” are currently preparing textbooks on German constitutional law and criminal law, a handbook on intellectual property law, and a casebook on the law of migration. We want to use the gathered experience and established infrastructure to take the project beyond Germany for a global collaboration in English in the field of public international law. The textbook will first be created in Wikibooks under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA; in a second step, the aim is to publish the book with a publisher (equally under Open Access terms).
The authors and editors will work together as an agile collective, i.e. decision-making processes are non-hierarchical and the teams employ agile working methodologies. Building on previous experience, the team of authors and editors collaboratively chooses, discusses, and prioritizes the content of the book. The actual writing takes place in regular “writing sprints” directly in Wikibooks. Each writing sprint is followed by an open peer review process by the other authors on the team. The team decides together when the book is finished.
What you should bring:
- Solid knowledge of public international law; ideally teaching experience;
- Willingness to create openly licensed content on a platform such as Wikibooks, and to respond to comments and suggested changes from external contributors once the content is complete;
- A view of scholarship as an iterative process that is nourished by peer review by colleagues;
- Curiosity and openness towards new technologies (mostly self-explanatory – we provide tutorials/videos and friendly assistance at all times).
What you get:
- An opportunity to disseminate and share your own teaching experience;
- Contact to many interesting colleagues with new perspectives on your own work;
- Experience in digital, agile project management as a form of work of the future.
Interested? Please fill out this form until the 14th of June 2021.
A first online get-together will take place on 30 June 2021 at 12:00 CEST. Given our aim to create a truly international textbook reflecting the diverse experiences and perspectives on the field, we are interested in authors from all around the globe and particularly also from countries of the “Global South”. When choosing the team members, we aim to reflect diversity in terms of gender, geography, social status, etc.
Editors: Sué González Hauck, Raffaela Kunz, Max Milas
We are happy to answer any further questions via pil@openrewi.org.