The preface to the 2004 edition of Klio polska. Studia i materiały z dziejów historiografii polskiej po II wojnie światowej (Polish Clio. Studies and materials on the history of Polish historiography after WWII), published under the aegis of the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, reads: “Initially this collection was intended as a continuation of the two-volume anthology Historians on History (1963, 1966) edited by Marian Henryk Serejski. It presents Polish historians’ most representative theoretical and methodological views from the late eighteenth century to the inter-war period. Considering that the construction of Historians on History had not become outdated, supplementing this two-volume work with the period of the fifty years which followed the outbreak of the Second World War to cover the era of the Polish People’s Republic seemed as obvious a task as easy to carry out. However, our initial optimism quickly began to wane. It turned out that we were restricted in the selection of material to be included in a new volume because of some copyright issues. For this reason, we had to drop the idea of publishing a continuation of the collection of sources mentioned above. However, we did not doubt that it was necessary to continue scholarly research into the most recent history of Polish historiography. It is how the idea of Klio polska – a collection of studies on the history of historiography was born. We want to focus on the past fifty years. However, this does not mean an exclusion of papers on earlier history, including the inter-war period and the nineteenth century. It would simply be difficult to understand the contemporary Polish historiography without any reference to some specific issues that came to the fore after 1795, that is, after the year which opened to the Poles the era of stateless existence”.

Such was the birth of Klio polska. It did not end after one volume, for the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History found it worthwhile to continue it as a new series. In the following few years, there appeared in print five further volumes, marked with the numbers from two to six, while the first volume is, in bibliographical terms, left with no number. With time, the titles of consecutive numbers were slightly altered. The changes to the titles of particular volumes concerned only the period covered by each of them. The first four volumes were devoted to Polish historiography after the Second World War, while the last two also covered Polish historiography of the nineteenth century. However, the essential part of the title: Klio polska. Studia i materiały z dziejów historiografii polskiej (Polish Clio. Studies and materials on the history of Polish historiography) remained unchanged, and so did the graphic design of particular volumes, which differed from each other only in the colour of their paperback covers. The exception is volume three, which, having been awarded a prize in a competition organised by the Institute of National Remembrance “Memory and Justice”, distinguishes itself from the remaining volumes by its hardcover.

The idea to present studies of the history of Polish historiography entered a new stage after the decision taken by the Director of the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences at the end of 2014 to transform the series into a scholarly yearbook published on the Internet. In its new form, Klio Polska is designed to cover the whole of the history of Polish historiography, thus including the period before the nineteenth century – of which we wish to inform all the authors interested in having their papers published in our journal.

The change in the formula of the publication is reflected in its title. Removed from it is the part which indicated the chronological range of studies included in previous volumes. In addition, the title is written in capital letters, which is proper to scholarly journals. Now the title of the journal is as follows: Klio Polska. Studia i Materiały z Dziejów Historiografii Polskiej (Polish Klio. Studies and Materials on the History of Polish Historiography).

In assuming the form of a scholarly journal, Klio Polska is supplemented with a new section, “Reviews and Reports”. However, regardless of these formal and structural changes, the areas of research to be dealt with in the journal remain the same. The first of them concerns the relationship between Polish and non-Polish historical thought, including in particular European historical thought; the second – the analysis of theoretical, methodological and political views underlying the development of Polish historiography; the third – the history of institutions that formed the infrastructure of Polish historical sciences; the fourth – the analysis of works written by distinguished representatives of Polish historiography; and the fifth – attempts to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to historiographical investigations or to apply typically historiographical approach to studies that lie outside the field of the history of historiography such as, for example, business history or what is known as “organisational history”. Of course, these ranges are not impassable borderlines. We realise that contemporary historiographical studies venture into realms that have hitherto been unexplored, thus making it possible to better situate the development of historiography in the present context, including our presumptions about its future course. However, we are open to innovations, reserving the right to judge their scholarly value and usefulness to our Journal.