Joint and multi-authored publication patterns in the Digital Humanities

Abstract

The stereotype of the multi-authored Digital Humanities paper is well known but has not, until now, been empirically investigated. Here we present the results of a statistical analysis of collaborative publishing patterns in Computers and the Humanities (CHum) ; Literary and Linguistic Computing (LLC) ; and, as a control, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (AAAG) in order to take a first step towards investigating concepts of 'collaboration' in Digital Humanities. We demonstrate that in two core Digital Humanities journals, CHum and LLC, single-authored papers predominate. In AAAG, single-authored papers are also predominant. In regard to multi-authored papers the statistically significant increases are more wideranging in AAAG than in either LLC or CHum, with increases in all forms of multi-authorship. The author connectivity scores show that in CHum, LLC, and AAAG, there is a relatively small cohort of authors who co-publish with a wide set of other authors, and a longer tail of authors for whom co-publishing is less common.

Digital Humanities: What Can Libraries Offer?

“…Julianne Nyhan and Oliver Duke-Williams performed a statistical analysis of collaborative publishing patterns in the journals Computers and the Humanities (CHum) , Literary and Linguistic Computing (LLC) (1986-2011), and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (AAAG) (1966-2013). 6 While single authorship predominated and held steady in CHum, there was a significant increase over time in dual-and triple-authored articles. In LLC, single authorship was predominant with a major upsurge in triple-authored articles.…”

No Uniform Culture: Patterns of Collaborative Research in the Humanities

“…22 produced by single authors. 25 The analysis reveals a further nuance by observing that "there is a relatively small cadre of authors who co-publish with a wide set of other authors, and a longer tail of authors for whom co-publishing is less common." 26 The study by Nyhan and Duke-Williams affirms the notion that DH work features more coauthorship than other forms of humanities scholarship but suggests that a smaller pool of scholars drive this difference.…”

Citational politics: Quantifying the influence of gender on citation in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

“…Weingart and Eichmann's work, which examines submitters' country of origin, gender, home discipline, language, topic of presentation, and other identifiers, is part of a growing trend of citation analysis in digital humanities, which has made an important intervention in scholarly communications. For example, digital humanities has facilitated quantitative analysis of citations within humanities disciplines, illuminated its citational networks, and created workflows and tools for interpreting citations (Sula, 2012;Crymble and Flanders, 2013;Blaney and Siefrig, 2017;Nyhan and Duke-Williams, 2014;Sula and Miller, 2014;Romanello, 2016). Much of this work focuses on collaboration in digital humanities, which is an important consideration.…”