The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

The author places Grmek's editorial within the flux of the historiographical debate which, since the middle of the 1970s, has concentrated on two major crises due to the end of social science-oriented 'scientific history' and to the 'linguistic turn'. He also argues that Grmek's historiographical work of the 1980s and 1990s was to some extent an alternative to certain observed changes in historical fashion and has achieved greater intelligibility because of its commitment to a rational vision of science and historiography.