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Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research
More info and resources at: https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0192

Contents

Acknowledgements

ix

Notes on the Contributors

xi

1.

Introduction: Power, Practices, and the Gatekeepers of Humanistic Research in the Digital Age

1

Jennifer Edmond

The Impact of Collaboration

13

Evaluators as Gatekeepers

14

Publishers as Gatekeepers

16

This Volume’s Contribution

18

Bibliography

19

2.

Publishing in the Digital Humanities: The Treacle of the Academic Tradition

21

Adriaan van der Weel and Fleur Praal

The Functions of Scholarly Publishing in the Print Paradigm

25

Transferring the Functions of Publishing to the Digital Medium

29

Dissemination

31

Registration

34

Certification

38

Archiving

40

Conclusions

41

Bibliography

44

3.

Academic Publishing: New Opportunities for the Culture of Supply and the Nature of Demand

49

Jennifer Edmond and Laurent Romary

Introduction

49

The Place of the Book in Humanities Communication

52

Scholarly Reading and Browsing

55

Old and New Ways to Share Knowledge

58

The Evaluator as an Audience for Scholarship

62

Barriers to Change, and Opportunities

63

Research Data and the Evolving Communications Landscape

71

Conclusions

72

Bibliography

75

4.

The Impact of Digital Resources

81

Claire Warwick and Claire Bailey-Ross

Understanding and Measuring Impact

82

Commercial Impact

91

Media and Performance

92

Cultural Heritage

93

Policy Impact

96

Limitations of the REF Case Studies

96

Conclusions

98

Bibliography

99

5.

Violins in the Subway: Scarcity Correlations, Evaluative Cultures, and Disciplinary Authority in the Digital Humanities

105

Martin Paul Eve

Judging Excellence and Academic Hiring and Tenure

107

The Diverse Media Ecology of Digital Humanities

112

Strategies for Changing Cultures: Disciplinary Segregation, Print Simulation, and Direct Economics

115

Bibliography

119

6.

‘Black Boxes’ and True Colour — A Rhetoric of Scholarly Code

123

Joris J. van Zundert, Smiljana Antonijević, and Tara L. Andrews

Introduction

123

Background

125

Methodology

131

Experiences

134

Inventio — The Impetus for DH Researchers to Code

134

Dispositio — How Coding Constructs Argument

137

Elocutio — Coding Style, Aesthetics of Code

141

Memoria — The Interaction between Code and Theory

143

Actio — The Presentation and Reception of DH Codework

146

Conclusions

150

Recommendations

152

Appendix 6.A: Survey Questions

157

Bibliography

158

7.

The Evaluation and Peer Review of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities: Experiences, Discussions, and Histories

163

Julianne Nyhan

Introduction

163

Experiences and Discussion of Evaluation c. 1963–2001

167

Individual and Group Experiences of Making Digital Scholarship

168

What Should Be Evaluated?

170

Which Evaluative Criteria?

172

Organising the Peer Review Process

173

Implicit Peer Review

174

Conclusion

177

Bibliography

179

8.

Critical Mass: The Listserv and the Early Online Community as a Case Study in the Unanticipated Consequences of Innovation in Scholarly Communication

183

Daniel Paul O’Donnell

The Listserv as Case Study

185

You’ve got Mail

186

The LISTSERV Revolution

188

The Invisible Seminar

189

The Invisible Water-Cooler

191

What Is It that an Academic Mailing List Disrupts?

195

Online Communities vs Learned Societies

198

Same as it Ever Was? Looking Backwards and Forwards

200

Conclusion

202

Bibliography

203

9.

Springing the Floor for a Different Kind of Dance: Building DARIAH as a Twenty-First-Century Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities

207

Jennifer Edmond, Frank Fischer, Laurent Romary, and Toma Tasovac

Introduction: What’s in a Word?

207

But What Is Research Infrastructure?

210

Infrastructures as Knowledge Spaces

212

Why Do the Arts and Humanities Need Research Infrastructure?

214

History of a New Model of RI Development

216

The Activities of the DARIAH ERIC

221

The DARIAH Marketplace

222

DARIAH Working Groups

225

Policy and Foresight

225

Training, Education, Skills, and Careers

226

Conclusions (and a Few Concerns)

227

Appendix 9.A: Definitions of Research Infrastructure

230

Bibliography

232

10.

The Risk of Losing the Thick Description: Data Management Challenges Faced by the Arts and Humanities in the Evolving FAIR Data Ecosystem

235

Erzsébet Tóth-Czifra

Realising the Promises of FAIR within Discipline-Specific Scholarly Practices

235

A Cultural Knowledge Iceberg, Submerged in an Analogue World

237

Legal Problems that Are Not Solely Legal Problems

239

The Risk of Losing the Thick Description upon the Remediation of Cultural Heritage

242

The Scholarly Data Continuum

247

Data in Arts and Humanities — Still a Dirty Word?

250

The Critical Mass Challenge and the Social Life of Data

251

The Risk of Losing the Thick Description — Again

255

Conclusions: On our Way towards a Truly FAIR Ecosystem for the Arts and Humanities

258

Bibliography

263

Index

267