Digital

Challenges in Digital Humanities:

• Institutional Support: There is a significant challenge in gaining institutional support for digital publications compared to traditional print publications. Digital projects often lack the necessary financial and structural support, which affects the sustainability of these projects.

• Valuation of Digital Output: Digital outputs, such as databases or digital editions, are often undervalued compared to traditional printed works. This undervaluation can impact the recognition and career advancement of scholars working on digital projects.

• Publication and Curation of Digital Data: Unlike traditional print publications that have a well-established system for peer review and distribution, digital projects require scholars to manage many aspects of publication and curation themselves. This includes peer review, layout, and ensuring long-term discoverability and accessibility.

Systemic Issues in Academia:

• Academic Credit: Scholars with significant digital outputs may not receive equivalent recognition or career opportunities compared to those with traditional book publications. This issue is exacerbated by institutional policies that may not count digital scholarship adequately in evaluations for hiring or promotion.

• Multiplicity and Co-authorship: Contributions to digital projects often involve collaboration and co-authorship, which are not valued as highly as single-author works in many academic contexts, particularly in the humanities.

Technical and Resource Challenges:

• Resource Intensive: Creating and maintaining digital outputs requires significant human and monetary resources, which are often underestimated by institutions.

• Lack of Standardized Processes: Unlike the standardized processes for publishing books, digital projects often require custom solutions for peer review, layout, and distribution, which can be resource-intensive and costly.

Opportunities and Innovations:

• Integration and Recognition: Proposals were discussed to integrate digital projects more thoroughly within academic frameworks, such as assigning ISBNs to digital databases to elevate their status to that of a published book.

• Broadening Impact: Digital projects have the potential to reach a wider audience and have a more significant impact due to their accessibility online. However, this potential is often stifled by current academic valuation systems.

Potential Solutions:

• Rethinking Academic Values: There's a call to reconsider how digital contributions are valued within academia, suggesting systemic changes to how work is recognized and credited.

• Improving Support Structures: Enhancing support structures for digital scholarship could involve more substantial institutional backing, better funding models, and improved recognition systems that account for the unique challenges and contributions of digital humanities work.