Presentation at 2011 HASTAC Conference, Ann Arbor, December 2, 2011.

1. “Isn’t that a Tool?”
Interpreting and Championing Digital
Scholarly Communication in the Humanities
Sophia Krzys Acord, Ph.D.
Associate Director, Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere
Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law
University of Florida

2. The Future of Scholarly Communication Project
Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Final Report: Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly
Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs
in Seven Disciplines
Diane Harley, Ph.D., Senior Researcher and Principal Investigator;
Sophia Krzys Acord, Ph.D.; Sarah Earl-Novell, Ph.D.; Shannon
Lawrence, M.A.; C. Judson King, Professor, Provost Emeritus, and
Principal Investigator
(January 2010)
Peer Review in Academic Promotion and Publishing: Its
Meaning, Locus, and Future. A Project Report and Associated
Recommendations, Proceedings from a Meeting, and Background
Papers
Diane Harley and Sophia Krzys Acord
(March 2011)
Project Website and Associated Document Links:
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/research/scholarlycommunication
Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley

3. Final Report/Database
http://escholarship.org/uc/cshe_fsc

4. Findings re: Publishing and Promotion
Great diversity!
Variables: Age, institution, field, personality
We see a dichotomous situation:
• Electronic forms of publications consumed heavily.
• Strong adherence to publishing in conventional, high-
stature “print” outlets.
Few new genres being submitted in T&P dossiers.
Distinguish:
In-progress communication VS. fully peer-reviewed
archival publication

5. Why books and articles?
• Passports to promotion
• Proof of concept: A way of formally tracking
ideas in a record of progress
• Shortcuts to measure research inputs by
measuring outputs (Christine Borgman)
• Cognitive devices/genres (Janet Murray)
• Translations /Framings of one’s research into
the language of a field (in light of other
objects, results, theories) (Karin Knorr-Cetina)

6. Producing scholarship
Historian:
• “…for me it isn’t just the data, but the thinking
to go out and find these data elsewhere. For
other historians, it’s as much about the
interpretation as the data… Five historians can
go to the same material and write different
books. For us historians, it’s still more of the
process of your personal relation with the
data. The data never speak for themselves.”

7. The Digital Humanities: Let a Million
Flowers Bloom

8. The challenge: Isn’t that a tool?
Perceptions of What Perceptions of Digital
Scholars Do Genres
• Produce knowledge • Acquisition of skills
• Develop a closely- • Data
reasoned argument • Provide information
• Prove/validate • Research technique
something • Services to scholarship
Historian: “When colleagues evaluate colleagues, they
want to see the quality of the scholarship. If [the
technology] does feed it, it’s going to show up in the
quality of the scholarship.”

9. How is Communication Effective?
Prof. Charles Goodwin (Applied
Linguistics, UCLA)
• To convince someone, we need to
take into account what they know
and their orientation to the material
world.

10. The response/negotiation
• Emphasize the traditional question
– “What is the intellectual work here? What does it do in the
humanities to push scholarship forward or say something
about the nature of studying X?” [Historian]
• Publish rigorously peer-reviewed work
using, in parallel to, or about the digital work
• Wait it out
• Get a joint appointment
• Find a more flexible institution

11. ‘Translation Rubrics’ from digital innovators
• Explain how work has been demonstrably
peer reviewed
• Build your case early on
– Department chair -> Dean
– Bring colleagues in at every project stage
– Draw on scholarly society documents
• Articulate how this is scholarship
– Relate it to past work.
– How does it fit into larger narratives in the field?
– Make the process of interpretation explicit
• Minimize barriers of time and technical expertise

12. So, is it just a tool?
Argument is the intellectual tool we use in order
to prove that something is true, on the basis
of evidence.
Knowledge is the conclusion of the argument.

13. So, is it just a tool?
Well, how is it used?
Scholar-Creator
• Procedural knowledge
• Knowledge design (argument) as knowledge-making
Digital Genre/Project
• Collection of knowledge
• Presents meaningful possibilities (embodied argument)
User
• ? Situation for ‘knowing’?

14. Lessons from the arts:
New ways of ‘knowing’?
Knowing as a praxical activity, something we do.
Sensorium of scholarship (J. Schnapp via C. Jones)
• Dewey, J. and Bentley, A (1949) Knowing and the Known.
• Noë, Alva (2006) Action in Perception.
• Sutherland, I. & Acord, S. (2007) Thinking with art: From situated
knowledge to experiential knowing. Journal of Visual Arts
Practice, 6(2), 125-140.
"Critical Art: Faculty
of the Cornell
University
Department of Art,"
June 1-23; Hangzhou
Normal
University, Tsinghua

15. “Credit, Time, and Personality:
Incorporating disciplinary needs and values into predictions
about the future of scholarly communication”
by S.K. Acord and D. Harley
In: New Media and Society
Special issue: Scholarly Communication:
Changes, Challenges & Initiatives
Edited by Nick Jankowski and Steve Jones
Open Peer Review: http://nms-theme.ehumanities.nl/