It’s the Content, Stupid

Libraries and librarians have an important stake in the development of online scholarship. Many benefits will come from the growth of digital monographs and journals as well as the development of scholarly websites, online archives, blogs, wikis, and other outlets for research even farther afield from the traditional models. Chief among these advantages are lower prices and improved access for consumers, smaller capital investments and more efficient workflows for publishers, and faster feedback and a wider readership for scholars. There are, however, many impediments to the digital transition, and as key stakeholders in this arena, librarians must understand the obstacles as well as the advantages. 

Scholars who produce research online often complain that their efforts are not sufficiently rewarded or encouraged by tenure and promotion committees, especially when they work in media other than the digital equivalent of the scholarly journal or monograph. We recently heard a researcher say he had no concerns about the evaluation of his electronic journal articles. However, most of the cutting-edge work in his field is taking place on blogs. Scholars in his field are also beginning to develop significant online archives of subject-based materials. So, he asked, what are the vetting and reward processes for a blog posting or a scholarly website?

Many reasons for this resistance to online scholarship have been suggested over the years—everything from doubts about long-term preservation, to fetishism for print, to a lack of leadership, to a dearth of technical expertise, and more. These are all legitimate obstacles. But one serious factor that has not been sufficiently considered has to do with longstanding biases about the value of certain kinds of work in relation to others. This is a problem because much of the content that has so far proven most amenable to the web has long been regarded as second tier scholarship at best, academic scutwork at worst—the online equivalents of author or subject guides, critical editions, bibliographies, encyclopedias, indexes, concordances, or collections of letters or manuscripts.

Online work also tends to be collaborative and documentary by nature, characteristics not typically associated with the ideal of the lone scholar laboring to produce the extended work of critical explication or interpretive commentary. Simply put, often the biggest stumbling block for digital scholarship in the tenure and reward process has nothing to do with the form, the fact that the work is made available in a digital container, or that it is the product of networked technology. Instead, to adapt a popular political expression from nearly two decades ago, it’s the content, stupid.

There is no disputing that the web as a research tool and venue is growing in impact and influence—blogs, wikis, podcasts, discussion boards, listservs, personal, discipline, and institutional websites are ubiquitous, and new e-forums, groups, and devices are being developed every day. A 2008 report from the Association of Research Libraries, Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication, calls these and other emerging means of exchange and development “new model” or “new media” publications. And as the report underscores, their existence and influence are “no longer hypothetical but increasingly part of the everyday reality of research and scholarship.  

Yet the Modern Language Association’s Report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion found in 2007 that fewer than half the department chairs surveyed had any experience in evaluating digital work of any kind. Even more discouraging, the survey found that the larger and better established the department, the greater the likelihood that work online is disregarded completely: “Carnegie Doctorate–granting institutions consistently reported the highest percentages of inexperience.”

A different culture prevails in the sciences, and this is at least part of the reason the scientific community has been quicker to adapt to online research and publication. For example, scientists have traditionally been open to a wider range of publication formats and venues—depending on the discipline, everything from the traditional journal article to abstracts to technical reports to poster sessions and beyond. These formats are not of equal value and the range of legitimate publication venues varies from discipline to discipline; but many more types of publications or expressions of research are viewed as meritorious by the scientific establishment than the humanities. Also, in the sciences collaboration is a necessity, so there are long and well-established traditions for dealing with and sorting out issues of recognition and reward. There is additionally a greater appreciation for the work involved in gathering and developing data—what a humanist might think of as primary records, the raw materials of research.