Session 404 – Evaluating Digital Scholarship Today: Problems and Solutions
Scholarship has broadened and deepened digitally since the MLA last revised its “Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media” (originally published 2000, updated 2012). By substantially incorporating digital technologies, methods, media, and forms of output, today’s scholarship is different than it was a decade ago. This session organized by the MLA Committee on Information Technology, now preparing a third version of the “Guidelines,” focuses on key problems in evaluating digital scholarship for publication, hiring, promotion, or tenure today. What kinds of digital research, teaching, professional activity, and service (including but not limited to the digital humanities or digital media studies fields) now need new practices or standards of evaluation across a variety of institutions and academic positions? What are the responsibilities of individual scholars to document and explain their outcomes and methods of digital authorship, collaboration, publication, peer review, or project management? And what are the matching responsibilities of their departments and institutions to inform themselves about, and set transparent standards for assessing, contemporary digital scholarship?
Saturday, 6 January 2024, 8:30 – 9:45 AM EST (Convention Program page)
Marriott 401-403
Hashtags: #mla24, #s404
Presider
- Nhora Lucía Serrano, Hamilton C.
Presentations
- “Digital Scholarship for Keeps: What Matters and What Lasts?” — Elisa Beshero-Bondar, Penn State U, Erie-Behrend [Abstract and Slides]
- “Just Not That into You: New Evaluation Guidelines Seeking Older Disciplines” — Alison Booth, U of Virginia [Abstract and Resources]
- “Digitally (In)Coherent: Modeling Early Career Research Profiles in the Digital Humanities” — Kandice Sharren, U of Saskatchewan [Text of talk & slides]
- Respondent — Alan Liu, U of California, Santa Barbara, “Version 3 of the MLA’s ‘Guidelines on Evaluating Digital Scholarship’: The Drafting Work of the MLA Committee on Information Technology”
One of two sessions at #MLA2024 organized by the MLA’s Committee on Information Technology.
