Process as Product: Scholarly Communication Experiments in the Digital Humanities

Abstract

Scholarly communication outreach and education activities are proliferating in academic libraries. Simultaneously, digital humanists—a group that includes librarians and non-librarians based in libraries, as well as scholars and practitioners without library affiliation—have developed forms of scholarship that demand and introduce complementary innovations focused on infrastructure, modes of dissemination and evaluation, openness, and other areas with implications for scholarly communication. Digital humanities experiments in post-publication filtering, open peer review, middle-state publishing, decentering authority, and multimodal and nonlinear publication platforms are discussed in the context of broader library scholarly communication efforts.

Publishing Archaeological Excavations at the Digital Turn

“…Specialists in science communication will no doubt find this challenge all too familiar (Logan 2001; Besley and Tanner 2011; Fischhoff and Scheufele 2014; Krause 2017), but we would argue, as have others (Jay 2010;Coble et al 2014;Green 2016) that the advent of digital publication has pushed us all to become better communicators of our research, and what has previously been a specialist concern is now the business of all scholars and researchers. The first volume of the Gabii Project Reports is the result of an initial experiment in writing linked and layered text addressing different audiences, directly connected to primary data and media, in a restructuring of the excavation monograph.…”

Editorial Introduction: Web-based Archaeology and Collaborative Research

“…Despite the growth of the internet in the last two decades, archaeologists have been relatively slow to exploit fully the potentials of electronic publication. Some success in developing and integrating web-based data management and publishing tools is occurring in the humanities with open-source web publishing platforms for sharing digital collections and creating media-rich online exhibits such as Scalar (https://scalar.usc.edu/) and Omeka (https://omeka.org/) (Blanke et al 2014;Coble et al 2014;Richards et al 2011;Tracy 2016). In archaeology, academic journals are making moves to integrate digital data and applications into publications; however, digital data such as 3D models become ancillary despite often being, particularly with born digital data, integral to analysis, interpretation, and scholarly explanation.…”

Assessing safe spaces for digital scholarship in the library

“…Students, particularly females and students of color, are seeking social networks where they can learn coding, digital storytelling, Wikipedia editing, and other skills in supportive, collaborative environments (Ada Initiative, 2015a;Ada Initiative, 2015b;Robinson, Sterner & Johnson, 2006; The Roestone Collective, n.d.; Thorne, 2014). As academic librarians take a more active role in participating in these shared learning environments and the production of digital scholarship, they are starting to assess whether or not their libraries are appropriate spaces-and if librarians are the appropriate people-to support digital scholarship pedagogies such as collaborative learning and experimentation (Coble, Potvin & Shirazi, 2014;Russell, 2013;Schaffner & Erway, 2014;Sinclair, 2014;Vandegrift, 2012;Vandegrift, Varner & Varner, 2013).…”

“…Digital scholarship took off as an emerging discipline and academic trend in the second decade of the 21 st century. Many librarians are still trying to understand the discipline and how they fit into it (Coble, Potvin & Shirazi, 2014;Dresselhaus, 2015;Schaffner & Erway, 2014;Vandegrift, 2012). Academic librarians have written detailed plans on building digital scholarship programs, centers, and support services within their libraries.…”