The OIB invites tenders for its series "Beiruter Texte und Studien" from publishers with relevant experience before June 20 2025.

The Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) is a leading and interdisciplinary academic research institute on the Middle East and North Africa from Late Antiquity to the present. Being a part of the Max Weber Foundation – German Humanities Institutes Abroad, Bonn, which guarantees the academic freedom of its researchers the OIB is generously funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. 

The OIB publishes three publication series, Bibliotheca Islamica (BI), Beiruter Texte und Studien (BTS), and Orient-Institute Studies (OIS).

The Beiruter Texte und Studien (BTS) is the OIB’s double-blind peer reviewed book series for research on the historic and contemporary Middle East. Since its inception in 1964, the series has published more than 140 books and has served as a platform for innovative studies. Its field combines disciplinary, interdisciplinary and area-studies approaches in the humanities and social sciences, including Islamic and Arabic studies, philology and literature, philosophy, religious studies, theology, material culture, art and architecture, history, cultural and social anthropology, law and critical legal studies, sociology, psychology, geography, political science and gender studies. The series publishes monograph studies, conference proceedings of the OIB and other collective volumes in German, English, Arabic and French.

For this series, the OIB invites tenders from publishers with relevant experience before June 20 2025 that meet the requirements and conditions specified below. The selection procedure is a two-stage process: first, the OIB invites bids that fulfil the mandatory criteria listed below in order to assess the bidder’s suitability. In a second round, the OIB will invite a maximum of 4 suitable applicants to submit a binding bid along criteria to be communicated to those selected in order to identify the best tender.
 

Mandatory criteria
 

1)    The contract begins 1 January 2026 and terminates after five years. The contract can be extended by mutual agreement. 
2)    As the publisher of the series, the OIB retains the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the series. 
3)    The OIB decides on content, author and publisher contracts.
4)    The bidder must demonstrate its ability to produce Arabic, English, French and German texts through his previous book portfolio and specimen chapters of selected works from the same.
5)    The books are produced in printed form and, parallel to that, as an electronic version in open access without embargo, preferably Golden Access.
6)    The bidder assigns an ISBN, a DOI at book and chapter level and registers the book with digital object identifier agencies. It also specifies in its offer to which libraries it will send deposit copies of the titles to be produced. These must include at least the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Leipzig and the Library of Congress. 
7)    The bidder produces an electronic online-version for the MENADoc-repository and specifies whether it makes it accessible at other repositories. 
8)    The OIB seeks to publish texts that are as accessible as possible and that take into account the harmonized European standard EN 301 549 (currently version EN 301 549 v3. 2.1). The bidder sets out its capability to meet this standard. The contract will contain the requirement to cope with possible updates of the standard. 
9)    The OIB aims to make the books in the series available worldwide. Hence, every tender demonstrates the bidder’s distribution chains, especially in the Middle East.
10)    The bidder sets out its advertising strategy for the series. This includes to demonstrate the ability its participation in relevant book fairs.
11)    The bidder sets out its advertising strategy for the series including its participation in relevant book fairs.

Please send in your contractual tenders addressing the aforementioned requirements and conditions before June 20 (Beirut time) 2025 to the following dedicated email-address:

btscontract@orient-institut.org
 

Any tender submitted will be regarded as an offer by the Bidder and does not constitute or imply the acceptance of the tender. Multiple files and emails must be clearly identified by indicating in the subject line the bidder. The bidder should receive an email acknowledging email receipt. All files must be free of viruses and not corrupted. It is recommended that the entire bid be consolidated into as few attachments as possible. The Orient-Institut Beirut and/or the Max-Weber-Foundation Bonn shall not be responsible for any costs associated with a supplier’s preparation and submission of a tender, regardless of the outcome or the manner of conducting the selection process. Bids must be handed in in English. Additional translations into German or Arabic are possible but not required.