Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research

7 MB·English

by  Jennifer Edmond

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
AND THE PRACTICES OF
HUMANITIES RESEARCH

Digital Technology and
the Practices of
Humanities Research
Edited by Jennifer Edmond
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© 2020 Jennifer Edmond. Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapters’
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Jennifer Edmond (ed.), Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research.
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0192
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ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-839-6
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-840-2
ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-841-9
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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 1
Humanistic Research in the Digital Age
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 21
Academic Tradition
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 29
Medium
Dissemination 31
Registration 34
Certification 38
Archiving 40
Conclusions 41
Bibliography 44
3. Academic Publishing: New Opportunities for the Culture 49
of Supply and the Nature of Demand
Jennifer Edmond and Laurent Romary
Introduction 49
The Place of the Book in Humanities Communication 52
Scholarly Reading and Browsing 55
vi Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research
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 71
Landscape
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 105
Cultures, and Disciplinary Authority in the Digital
Humanities
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, 115
Print Simulation, and Direct Economics
Bibliography 119
6. ‘Black Boxes’ and True Colour — A Rhetoric of Scholarly 123
Code
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
Contents vii
Conclusions 150
Recommendations 152
Appendix 6.A: Survey Questions 157
Bibliography 158
7. The Evaluation and Peer Review of Digital Scholarship in 163
the Humanities: Experiences, Discussions, and Histories
Julianne Nyhan
Introduction 163
Experiences and Discussion of Evaluation c. 1963–2001 167
Individual and Group Experiences of Making Digital 168
Scholarship
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 183
Community as a Case Study in the Unanticipated
Consequences of Innovation in Scholarly
Communication
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: 207
Building DARIAH as a Twenty-First-Century Research
Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities
Jennifer Edmond, Frank Fischer, Laurent Romary, and Toma Tasovac
Introduction: What’s in a Word? 207
But What Is Research Infrastructure? 210
viii Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research
Infrastructures as Knowledge Spaces 212
Why Do the Arts and Humanities Need Research 214
Infrastructure?
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 235
Management Challenges Faced by the Arts and
Humanities in the Evolving FAIR Data Ecosystem
Erzsébet Tóth-Czifra
Realising the Promises of FAIR within Discipline-Specific 235
Scholarly Practices
A Cultural Knowledge Iceberg, Submerged in an Analogue 237
World
Legal Problems that Are Not Solely Legal Problems 239
The Risk of Losing the Thick Description upon the 242
Remediation of Cultural Heritage
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 258
for the Arts and Humanities
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 my own
understanding of the institutional and individual issues in play. In
particular, I would like to warmly thank Susan Schreibman for her early
contributions in clarifying the focus of this volume and assembling
an exciting panel of contributors and Laurence Taylor for his careful
copyediting.