Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research

Jennifer Edmond

Description

How does technology impact research practices in the humanities? How does digitisation shape scholarly identity? How do we negotiate trust in the digital realm? What is scholarship, what forms can it take, and how does it acquire authority?

This diverse set of essays demonstrate the importance of asking such questions, bringing together established and emerging scholars from a variety of disciplines, at a time when data is increasingly being incorporated as an input and output in humanities sources and publications. Major themes addressed include the changing nature of scholarly publishing in a digital age, the different kinds of ‘gate-keepers’ for scholarship, and the difficulties of effectively assessing the impact of digital resources. The essays bring theoretical and practical perspectives into conversation, offering readers not only comprehensive examinations of past and present discourse on digital scholarship, but tightly-focused case studies.


This timely volume illuminates the different forces underlying the shifting practices in humanities research today, with especial focus on how humanists take ownership of, and are empowered by, technology in unexpected ways. Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research is essential reading for scholars, students, and general readers interested in the changing culture of research practices in the humanities, and in the future of the digital humanities on the whole.


 

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 janvier 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783748426
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND THE PRACTICES OF HUMANITIES RESEARCH
Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research
Edited by Jennifer Edmond
https://www.openbookpublishers.com
© 2020 Jennifer Edmond. Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapters’ authors.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Attribution should include the following information:
Jennifer Edmond (ed.), Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0192
In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0192#copyright
Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/
All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web
Any digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0192#resources
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-839-6
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-840-2
ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-841-9
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-842-6
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-843-3
ISBN Digital (XML): 978-1-78374-844-0
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0192
Cover image: photo by Nanda Green on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/BeVW HMXYwwo
Cover design: Anna Gatti
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
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, the editor of this volume would like to thank the European Science Foundation for making possible both the original working group along with its meetings, and this open access publication. The NeDiMAH network continues to be a point of reference for scholars who are exploring not just how to use digital methods in the humanities and what it means to do this, but also what is at stake in the digital turn for our diverse and yet interconnected disciplines.
It would be remiss not to also thank the participants in the NeDiMAH events: their contributions to that early discussion are woven into the fabric of this volume and the issues it pursues. In particular, I would like to thank the Zadar meeting group: Linda Bree, Emma Clarke, Marin Dacos, Bianca Gualandi, Angela Holzer, Christina Kamposiori, Eva Kekou, Camilla Leathem, Francesca Morselli, Claudine Moulin, Alex O’Connor, Franjo Pehar, and Susan Reilly. Their collective and enthusiastic commitment to capturing a multidisciplinary and multisectoral snapshot of the shifts occurring in the communications landscape of the arts and humanities remain astonishingly relevant even after so many years. Finally, I am grateful to the many authors of this work who have either been required to show great patience with the slow development of the volume or work to very tight deadlines in order to bring its slow-growing content up to date. I include in this group those authors who were, for a number of reasons, unable to stay with the volume until the end, but whose drafts contributed to