Cathy Davidson has written a very useful post, “How Can A Digital Humanist Get Tenure?” As Davidson explains, the title of the post is posed as a question because this is a standard question for new fields and areas, and then she continues on to list several examples of people whose digital work supported them in earning tenure, as well as tenure and promotion guidelines that show how the process supports inclusion of digital work in the review for tenure. She then also includes additional resources for the evaluation and inclusion of digital work, notably including the MLA guidelines and wiki, and many others.
Like so many other folks, I’m also concerned with how we evaluate, communicate, and document digital work to ensure that those creating and participating in the work, as well as their institutional colleagues who support T&P processes, are all supported. At UF, I’m working on an internal process to establish what we’re currently calling facilitated peer review, to create a committee to support the peer review process for innovative and/or nontraditional forms of scholarship and scholarly work. The goal is to have the Committee establish the requirements for the facilitated peer review process – with the committee acting akin to an editorial board that would facilitate, but not conduct, peer review – specifically for innovative forms of scholarship to have this process support scholars undergoing and those conducting reviews for institutional concerns. For general and internal-UF needs, I’m very interested to see the comments and additional resources as they get added to Davidson’s post.
2012-09-17