Open Scholarship Press Collections: Community/Public & Community Engagement

Public Scholarship & Public Humanities

Alperin, Juan Pablo, Carol Muñoz Nieves, Lesley Schimanski, Gustavo E. Fischman, Meredith T. Niles, and Erin C. McKiernan. 2018. “How Significant Are the Public Dimensions of Faculty Work in Review, Promotion, and Tenure Documents?” Humanities Commons. https://doi.org/10.17613/M6W950N35

Alperin, Muñoz Nieves, Schimanski, Fischman, Niles, and McKiernan study how concepts of publicness and community engagement are represented in institutional review, promotion, and tenure guidelines and adjudication. The authors conclude that although these values are often touted by the university, they are sequestered to service considerations in the actual adjudication of faculty. Since service is already broadly considered as less important than research and teaching, the public aspects of one’s academic work are not valued as highly as research impact. Alperin et al. conclude that universities should consider how their civic missions could be better undertaken if faculty were rewarded for more open and/or more publicly engaged work.

Brennan, Sheila. 2016. “Public, First.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, 384–89. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Brennan looks at the use of the term public digital humanities and suggests that it has been misappropriated in some contexts. She argues that simply putting a digital humanities project online does not make it public, per se; rather, if digital humanists want to create public projects, they must consider the public first. Brennan points to the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media as an exemplary instance of public digital humanities / digital history. She also provides a brief summary of the ways in which a public digital humanities project should be accessible to potential audiences. Overall, Brennan suggests that the public and public engagement should be considered at the forefront of a public digital humanities and should not be assumed as a de facto element of making digital humanities work available on the web.

* Christie, Alex, Jana M. Usiskin, Jentery Sayers, and Kathryn Tanigawa. 2014. “Digital Humanities, Public Humanities.” Introduction to New American Notes Online 5. https://nanocrit.com/issues/issue5/introduction-digital-humanities-public-humanities

Christie et al. point to some threads in the conversation about the intrinsic relationship between digital and public humanities. They argue that, due to the great variety of possibilities for projects in the digital humanities, it is necessary to pay attention to context and representation, and to be culturally critical of technologies in order to develop socially meaningful projects, without taking the academy as a starting point, and to really engage with communities and social justice issues. The authors suggest that public scholarship must be made and conveyed through multiple modalities, and that bodies and embodied work are important both for digital and public knowledge production. To support this argument, Christie et al. use examples of projects that, while using digital technologies and media as essential for their design and execution also incorporate physical spaces in order to reach the public, including the Women Who Rock (WWR) project, the Spar project, and the Leimert Phone Company project. Finally, they call for more cultural criticism in digital humanities, and remark that technologies cannot be seen as neutral or passive, but rather must be situated, contextualized, and criticized.

Ψ Colbeck, Carole L., and Lisa D. Weaver. 2008. “Faculty Engagement in Public Scholarship: A Motivation Systems Theory Perspective.” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement 12 (2): 7–31.

Colbeck and Weaver examine faculty motivations for engaging in public scholarship. Whereas similar studies look at intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, Colbeck and Weaver integrate these factors with motivation systems theory, developed by Martin Ford, to gain a more complex understanding of why participants choose to engage in public scholarship and consider how these findings could encourage other faculty to do the same. The authors conducted a qualitative analysis of interviews with 12 faculty members from Penn State University engaged in public scholarship, looking at dimensions including professional identity, goals, and the integration of their research, teaching, and service roles. They also looked at participants’ perceptions about their own capabilities and their departments, faculties, and institutions and created “motivation maps” based on motivation systems theory. They conclude that participants’ motivations are too complex to be understood through a simple intrinsic/extrinsic motivation model and note that discipline, gender, ethnicity, and rank did not seem to affect engagement in public scholarship, but that most of the participants—who were selected because they were already doing public scholarship—identified as interdisciplinary scholars and viewed research, teaching, and service as highly integrated. The authors conclude that robust, meaningful institutional support for public scholarship can not only encourage faculty to engage in it but also help retain highly motivated and engaged faculty members.

Cuthill, Michael. 2012. “A ‘Civic Mission’ for the University: Engaged Scholarship and Community-Based Participatory Research.” Higher Education and Civic Engagement: Comparative Perspectives, edited by Lorraine McIlrath, Ann Lyons, and Ronaldo Munck, 81–99. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Cuthill explores the construct of engaged scholarship as emblematic of the civic mission of the university. For Cuthill, universities have an ethical obligation to contribute to the common good, and he sees this as being particularly feasible through community-based participatory research. Cuthill also argues that there is economic benefit to engaged scholarship, thereby connecting community engagement with the sustainability of universities as organizations.

† Davidson, Cathy N., and David Theo Goldberg. 2004. “Engaging the Humanities.” Profession, 42–62. https://doi.org/10.1632/074069504X26386

Davidson and Goldberg argue that despite marginalization, humanistic approaches and perspectives remain significant for successful, holistic university environments. Rather than taking a field-specific approach, Davidson and Goldberg propose a problem- or issue-based humanities model that allows for a more interdisciplinary approach. In this way, the comprehensive interpretive tools and complex models of cultural interaction integral to humanities work may resolve varied and continuous issues. The authors suggest that a conceptual and physical shift toward interdisciplinarities within institutions (rather than interdisciplinary institutions, models, or methods) offers a realistic and flexible approach to transforming academia and education.

* Ellison, Julie. 2013. “The New Public Humanists.” PMLA 128 (2): 289–98. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2013.128.2.289

Ellison observes a change in public humanities, which is traditionally understood in opposition to academic humanities, toward a more in-between position. She argues that in the last few decades the notion of public humanities has transformed into publicly-engaged scholarship in humanities. Such a transformation makes it difficult to even identify those involved: a group that Ellison calls new public humanists. The author lists various examples of programs and institutes to show how the idea of public humanities is not being considered without academic collaboration. Thus, the author points out, doing, understanding, and writing public humanities projects means to work in complex roles in and between organizations. Furthermore, she concludes by stressing the importance of considering how to exercise institutional agency for sustaining new public humanities scholars, since they can become marginalized in traditional departments.

† Ellison, Julie, and Timothy Eatman. 2008. Scholarship in Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University. Syracuse, NY: Imagining America. http://imaginingamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/TTI_FINAL.pdf

Ellison and Eatman discuss how the administrative side of American universities lags behind in terms of tenure and promotion policies, despite the increase in publicly engaged academic work. Through a series of interviews and substantial research, the authors clearly outline the current position of scholars doing work in publicly engaged fields and the anxieties involved in pursuing this work, including the strong discouragement by many universities themselves. The report serves as a guide for members of the university to change the position of publicly engaged scholarship so as to make it appropriate for career development by adapting policies regarding tenure and promotion. Ellison and Eatman address the importance of adjusting university policies according to informed graduate student demands, so that publicly engaged scholars of the future will stay and thrive on campus. The authors also acknowledge that adjusting policies is only part of the process; they offer a pathway to a larger change with regard to present conceptions of “peer” and “publication” that would make the production of knowledge more inclusive on campus and in the community.

† Farland, Maria. 1996. “Academic Professionalism and the New Public Mindedness.” Higher Education Exchange, 51–57. http://www.unz.org/Pub/HigherEdExchange-1996q1–00051

Farland points to the sudden increase of scholars interested in the public, especially following the recent discontent expressed against universities for their relative absence from the public sphere. However, examining this interest more closely, the author argues that academics have picked up the term “public” merely as an opportunity to develop their careers in their specialized disciplinary domains rather than to address the actual needs of wider society as demanded by politicians, media, and the public at large. This can be remedied by engaging higher education in public problem-solving and debates. Farland concludes that the new public-mindedness will allow the university to maintain its present status and restore its relation to public life, when academic practices are brought into a direct conversation with the problems a community faces.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2019. Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Fitzpatrick ruminates on the current state of academia with a focus on dominant trends toward competition, individualism, and weakening public support. She argues that a substantial shift is required in order to reinstate public trust and build relationships with the larger communities that universities are a part of. Moreover, Fitzpatrick suggests that making scholarship available is a foundational step in collaborating with others, in line with the community engagement for which she advocates throughout the book. Overall, Fitzpatrick argues that such a transition requires an embrace of listening over telling, of care over competition, and of working with the public rather than in isolation and insulation—in short, it requires the generous thinking (and actions) of the book’s title.

Ψ Gibson, Cynthia. 2009. “Research Universities and Engaged Scholarship: A Leadership Agenda for Renewing the Civic Mission of Higher Education.” Campus Compact (blog). Accessed March 2, 2021. https://compact.org/resource-posts/research-universities-and-engaged-scholarship-a-leadership-agenda-for-renewing-the-civic-mission-of-higher-education/

Gibson presents a statement on engaged scholarship developed by a group of scholar-practitioners at a gathering hosted by Campus Compact and Tufts University in October 2005. At the time of the gathering, engaged scholarship was primarily driven in the United States by liberal arts and community colleges, and the statement calls for research universities to support and advance the engaged scholarship movement as a way of fulfilling their public missions. The statement defines engaged scholarship as interdisciplinary research applied to solving complex, real-world problems. It cites several benefits for research universities, including meeting funding requirements that increasingly emphasize community engagement, retaining the interest of civic-minded students, and demonstrating universities’ value within their wider communities. It also discusses barriers faced by scholar-practitioners, including disciplinary silos, disconnects between universities and their communities, and a lack of understanding and support from institutions and scholarly communities. Because engaged scholarship is collaborative, interdisciplinary, participatory, and applied, it is sometimes seen as having less value than more traditional forms of scholarship, such as in tenure and promotion reviews. Gibson concludes with some actions university researchers can take to promote engaged scholarship, including working with university leadership, training graduate students, and developing policies, standards, and publishing infrastructures to support this form of scholarship.

* Glass, Chris R., and Hiram E. Fitzgerald. 2010. “Engaged Scholarship: Historical Roots, Contemporary Challenges.” In Institutional Change (vol. 1), edited by Hiram E. Fitzgerald, Cathy Burack, and Sarena D. Seifer, 9–24. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Glass and Fitzgerald acknowledge the historical context for the growth of engaged scholarship, specifically in the United States. They argue that the research productivity became the priority for academic growth at American academic institutions, overlooking the civic and social purpose of the universities. Based on Ernest Boyer’s model of scholarship, Glass and Fitzgerald’s discussion presents some characteristics, principles, and challenges for more engaged universities, as well as proposals for measurement and assessment of the engagement. They conclude that the ongoing discussion of how to integrate engagement in academic structures is reinvigorating the democratic purposes of higher education.

* Hsu, Wendy. 2016. “Lessons on Public Humanities from the Civic Sphere.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, 280–86. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hsu presents some lessons learned in the professional experience of working with civic technology in the public sector in order to think about public work in digital humanities. The author advocates for the importance of including public participation early and in-process to build projects with and not for the community, considering that not only solving but also defining the problems must be done collectively. Hsu relies on the work of the postcolonial intellectual Gayatri Spivak to state that humanistic practices of visioning, speculating, and reflecting are founded in interpretation, which can also lead to creative actions of making and design. Thus, she claims that digital humanists should listen more to the public, interpret problems collectively, and apply their digital making and design skills to organize public projects with a civic cause, prototype community-driven digital objects, or intervene in civic processes in a way that pushes them toward more social justice. Moreover, Hsu notes that academic institutions and their members are closer to the centre of decision-making power, and collaborating with the community is a way to have a dialogue across lines of power.

* Hubbard, Melanie, and Dermot Ryan. 2018. “Digital Humanities as Community Engagement: The Digital Watts Project.” In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Networks, and Community, edited by Robin Kear and Kate Joranson, 139–47. Cambridge, MA: Chandos Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102023-4.00010-0

Hubbard and Ryan elaborate how the partnership between a librarian and a faculty member can foster community engagement by students working on a digital public humanities project. They report on the Digital Watts Project, which allowed English students to reflect on the characteristics of a public—as opposed to purely academic—history project. The authors rely on postcolonial and subaltern studies, including the work of Ranajit Guha, as a basis to argue how the narratives and the representation in collections can oppose or reinforce biases and prejudices. The authors close the chapter by highlighting the successful librarian/faculty partnership that got the students thinking about the production of materials as a form of activism against racism, and feeling that they were contributing to the community beyond the university.

Jay, Gregory. 2012. “The Engaged Humanities: Principles and Practices for Public Scholarship and Teaching.” Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship 3 (1): 51–63.

Jay considers the concept of engaged or community scholarship in relation to the humanities. He argues that if the humanities took up such practices, as well as integrated new media tools and techniques more fully, the discipline might gain relevance and public value in an era of funding cuts. The author explains why engaged scholarship has not been as prominent in the humanities as it has in other disciplines: namely, for Jay, the humanities are based on extrapolative, written critique, and this does not translate well to project-based community engagement in the same way that initiatives in the social or medical sciences might. Regardless, Jay sees the rise of social media, digital humanities, and multimodal communication as a promising opportunity for the humanities to increase community engagement around the texts and topics traditionally at the heart of humanistic inquiry. Throughout, the author is careful to underline the necessity of accountability when it comes to academic/community partnerships, and the importance of avoiding a missionary style of public engagement that the university has often taken on in the past.

McMillan Cottom, Tressie. 2015. “Who Do You Think You Are?”: When Marginality Meets Academic Microcelebrity.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology 7. https://doi.org/10.7264/N3319T5T

Using her own extensive experience as an intellectual blogging and writing in public spaces, McMillan Cottom examines the politics at play in being an engaged academic online. She argues that despite the current call for social engagement and visibility, not all public intellectuals are treated equally online; that is, women and people of colour are often targeted and harassed for speaking publicly on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or their own blogs. McMillan Cottom gets to the heart of one of the challenges of open, social scholarship—the potential for abuse and harassment that working in the open can entail, especially for members of marginalized groups.

Morrison, Aimée. 2018. “Of, By, and For the Internet: New Media Studies and Public Scholarship.” The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities, edited by Jentery Sayers, 56–66. New York: Routledge.

Morrison explores the possibilities for viral academic speech to become what she terms public/scholarship. For Morrison, a mode of engagement with new media that weighed the public and scholarly elements more evenly would lead to more transformative, and less disruptive, work. The author takes time to examine and acknowledge her own privilege as a public scholar, as well as the repercussions of doing academic work in the open. She does not shy away from detailing the harm that can be caused from a viral social media presence or incident, especially to marginalized individuals. In this way, Morrison argues, technology should not be seen as automatically disruptive, nor immediately positive; rather, engaging with tools like social media opens up the possibility for transformative work that acknowledges privilege, systemic bias, and potential for harm.

Rogers, Katina. 2020. Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Theory, Practice, and Models for Thriving Beyond the Classroom. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

With graduate education reform as her mission, Rogers argues that current graduate training is not fit for purpose: it primarily trains PhDs to become tenure track faculty members when there are very few tenure track faculty jobs available, and most PhDs end up working in other roles or industries altogether. In doing so, Rogers suggests, academia replicates inequalities since a very small (generally moneyed) sliver of the population is willing to take the risk of such an investment without guaranteed employment upon graduation. She recommends that diversifying academic production modes and outputs would encourage a more diverse graduate student population, and she embraces public engagement activities to this end.

Δ Stommel, Jesse. 2018. “The Public Digital Humanities.” In Disrupting the Digital Humanities, edited by Dorothy Kim and Jesse Stommel, 79–90. Santa Barbara: Punctum Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv19cwdqv.8

Stommel defines the public digital humanities as a Venn diagram at the point where public, digital, and humanities work intersect. He argues that making scholarly work legible to the public and helping it find audiences is a form of outreach, community building, and advocacy. An example of this work is the Hybrid Pedagogy journal, which he founded. The journal aims to make publishing more pedagogical and to make pedagogy more public and dialogic, which includes making the work legible to a broader audience and embracing post-print publishing. Stommel concludes by saying that digital humanities cannot innovate through competition and hype cycles, but by listening to more diverse voices and advocating for marginalized teachers, scholars, and students.

Taylor, Laurie N., Poushali Bhadury, Elizabeth Dale, Randi K. Gill-Sadler, Leah Rosenberg, Brian W. Keith, and Prea Persaud. 2018. “Digital Humanities as Public Humanities: Transformative Collaboration in Graduate Education.” In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Networks, and Community, edited by Robin Kear and Kate Joranson, 31–44. Cambridge, MA: Chandos Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102023-4.00003-3

Taylor et al. present the University of Florida’s perspective on digital humanities programs and practices, where the humanities are considered as public humanities. In particular, the authors frame the Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate and the Graduate Internship Program as a model for both transformative collaboration and engagement of students. The authors mention some case studies of interns who have worked on publishing, sustaining, and translating digital humanities work to emphasize the creative and collaborative aspect of the initiative, as well as the important support it gives to all involved, including students, librarians, and faculty members. They add that, as experienced professionals who work in collaborative practices and with communities, librarians are essential partners in their digital humanities as public humanities concept.

Wickman, Matthew. 2016. “What Are the Public Humanities? No, Really, What Are They?” University of Toronto Quarterly 85 (4): 6–11.

Wickman considers the current state of the public humanities in search of a unified understanding of the activity. Based on a survey he developed with Jeremy Browne, Wickman concludes that there is no one definition for public humanities or consensus on what, exactly, the public humanities entail. As conceived currently, the public humanities are interpreted in many different ways with varying methods, associated initiatives, and levels of institutional support.

Woodward, Kathleen. 2009. “The Future of the Humanities in the Present & in Public.” Daedalus 138 (1): 110–23.

Woodward considers the current state of public scholarship in the humanities, specifically in the American context. She argues that by and large universities have not lived up to their civic mission of community engagement, although there are many good reasons to embrace public scholarship, and many examples of important and successful public scholarship initiatives. Woodward considers the reach of the digital realm as promising for connecting with more people over humanities issues, and concludes that digital publishing can, in turn, generate face-to-face engagement.

Collaboration, Partnership, & Engagement

† Avila, Maria, with contributions from Alan Knoerr, Nik Orlando, and Celestina Castillo. 2010. “Community Organizing Practices in Academia: A Model, and Stories of Partnerships.” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement 14 (2): 37–63. https://openjournals.libs.uga.edu/jheoe/article/view/430

Avila shares the details of her model of civic engagement at Occidental College in Northeast Los Angeles—a model focused on practical long-term reciprocal partnerships between communities and academics, rather than on abstracted discourse about the issues involved in maintaining these partnerships. Avila’s model includes assessing the interest of college members (e.g., faculty, community partners, and students), building a leadership team, creating dynamic strategies and programs, and engaging in critical reflection. She concludes by speculating whether other institutions eager to build academic community partnerships in order to bring about positive cultural and social change could adopt her model.

+ Barnes, Jessica V., Emily L. Altimare, Patricia A. Farrell, Robert E. Brown, C. Richard Burnett III, LaDonna Gamble, and James Davis. 2009. “Creating and Sustaining Authentic Partnerships with Community in a Systemic Model.” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement 13 (4): 15–29.

Barnes et al. present an approach to community partnerships developed by and practiced at Michigan State University. These approaches focus on community voices and are developmental, dynamic, and systematic in nature. The authors provide a brief history of university outreach and engagement since the 1980s, as well as a visual diagram of key terms in the University’s approach to outreach. This strategy aims to become embedded in stress-asset-based solutions, and to build community capacity for collaborative networks. The authors provide a list of challenges in current university partnerships and assess engagement efforts. Future research will examine how scholars, communities, and conveners define partnership success.

+ Bowdon, Melody A., and Russel G. Carpenter, eds. 2011. Higher Education, Emerging Technologies, and Community Partnerships: Concepts, Models and Practices. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Bowdon and Carpenter collect essays from 88 teachers, professors, and community leaders in a book that argues that technologies are being used in increasingly compelling ways to forge partnerships between college students, staff, faculty members, and the communities around them. The authors note that college and high school students are taking a lead in the process of creating valuable partnerships in local and global communities. The chapters include observations on successful partnerships between universities and other groups, as well as on the practical and theoretical meanings that technological tools have for different populations. Other issues addressed include the fact that capacity-building for technology use remains a critical objective in many regions of the world and that the challenges of online education heighten as it increasingly becomes a staple of academic training.

† Brown, David W. 1995. “The Public/Academic Disconnect.” In Higher Education Exchange Annual, 38–42. Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation.

Brown suggests that cuts in financial support—as a result of public unwillingness to support institutions—are at the root of the crisis in higher education. He argues that this is a natural reaction, given that many colleges and universities are often disengaged from the interests of the public and may not benefit the community in obvious ways. According to Brown, this calls for a rethinking of institutional practices, and could be remedied by having academics engage in public problem-solving with the community, rather than by merely talking to the community. The author argues that universities or regional consortiums should establish civic training centres in which academics and members of the community can engage in productive discourse toward problem-solving strategies together. In these training centres, faculty members could also offer students the necessary skills to approach situations that resemble real-life complexities and diversities. Brown believes that if an entire diverse campus worked actively toward a public goal, the rhetoric of multiculturalism could move closer to being realized in practice.

Brown, Susan. 2016. “Towards Best Practices in Online Collaborative Knowledge Production.” Doing Digital Humanities, edited by Constance Crompton, Richard Lane, and Raymond G. Siemens, 47–64. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Brown comments on the increase of multi-participant projects in the humanities, a traditionally isolated discipline. The subsequent increase in scholarly collaboration, she argues, requires the development of best practices in order to create scholarship that follows efficient data management practices, adheres to agreed-upon standards, is designed with sustainability in mind, and coordinates people effectively. Brown draws explicitly from her experience leading The Orlando Project and the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory. She surveys data formats, metadata standards, workflow approaches, and productivity tools, and repeatedly emphasizes the importance of conscientious project design and management. Overall, Brown details the several components of collaborative scholarly work that may not be initially obvious.

+ Butin, Dan. 2010. Service-Learning in Theory and Practice: The Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Butin’s book on the theoretical and practical applications of service learning in community engagement covers a variety of topics that range from the conceptualization of service learning to the establishment of institutional programs that create spaces for service learning in higher education. He provides examples of majors, minors, and certificate programs at a range of institutions that encourage service learning. The book concludes with a range of suggestions about how higher education institutions can embrace a scholarship of engagement and a discussion of current trends in service learning, as well as the implications that these hold for the future. Butin argues that democratic community engagement is a vital aspect of linking colleges and communities, and that service learning is an established institutional method of encouraging such partnerships.

Deegan, Marilyn, and Willard McCarty, eds. 2012. Collaborative Research in the Digital Humanities. Surrey, UK: Ashgate.

Deegan and McCarty edit a collection of chapters in the form of a festschrift for fellow digital humanist Harold Short. Inspired by Short’s own commitment to collaborative work and its importance for the digital humanities as a field, the chapters span issues of teamwork, varying professional roles, shared standards, crowdsourcing, and interdisciplinarity, among other topics. Overall, the collection reflects collaboration as a central tenet of digital scholarship in the twenty-first century.

+ Hall, Peter V., ed. 2011. Community-University Research Partnerships: Reflections on the Canadian Social Economy Experience. Victoria: University of Victoria.

Hall edits this collection of essays on various community and university relationships within Canada. The book includes topics on Canadian social economy research partnerships from 2005–2011, new proposals for evaluating the research partnership process, respect and learning from communities, and the British Columbia-Alberta research alliance’s effects on social economy. The appendices of the collection include region-specific information, such as the BC and Alberta Node and the Atlantic Node. This book focuses on the outcomes of previous grant offers and university-community partnerships, and the role of funding in university-related partnerships.

+ Hart, Angie, and Simon Northmore. 2008. “Auditing and Evaluating University-Community Engagement. Lessons from a UK Case Study.” Higher Education Quarterly 65 (1): 34–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1468-2273.2010.00466.x

Hart and Northmore argue that the development of effective audit and evaluation tools is still at a formative stage in university communities and public engagement activities. The literature search, which was based on articles written in or after the year 2000, confirmed the authors’ suspicion that the development of the appropriate tools for auditing and evaluating public engagement is still at its outset. The University of Brighton’s Corporate Plan is used as a case study for further elaboration, which includes engagement with the cultural, social, and economic life of the localities, region, and nation as its primary precept. The authors suggest that this case study demonstrates that back-and-forth dialogue between practitioners, researchers, and community members is essential to the audit and evaluation process.

+ Hart, Angie, and David Wolff. 2006. “Developing Communities of Practice through Community University Partnerships.” Planning Practice and Research 21 (1): 121–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/02697450600901616

Hart and Wolff draw on the experiences of local community-university partnership activities at the University of Brighton to offer what they perceive as a pragmatic framework for future community-university partnerships. The authors argue that unless the discussion is framed in a way that shows that academics are trying to understand community members, academics will have considerable difficulty in demonstrating the practical application of scholarly knowledge. The Community University Partnership program at the University of Brighton was established in 2003 to enhance the capacity of the community and university for engagement with mutual benefit, and to ensure that the university’s resources are fully available to and used by local and sub-regional communities. The authors conclude by addressing both the cultural and spatial dimensions of the terrain and their impact on community-university partnerships within a community of practice framework.

+ Holland, Barbara, and Judith Ramaley. 2008. “Creating a Supportive Environment for Community-University Engagement: Conceptual Frameworks.” In Engaging Communities, Proceedings of the 31^st HERDSA Annual Conference, Rotura, July 1–4. http://www.herdsa.org.au/system/files/Holland%20%26%20Ramaley.pdf

Holland and Ramaley argue that the changing nature of knowledge production, global issues, and the role of education affect intellectual strategies, relationships, societal roles, and expectations of how universities prepare students for the workplace. Educational institutions must increasingly embrace multidisciplinary and collaborative frameworks in order to address the evolving community landscape. The study concludes with the authors’ recommendation that universities stop using communities as laboratories for research and learning, and rather collaborate with and acknowledge the essential expertise and wisdom that resides in communities. This shift will transform current understandings and prompt academics to understand themselves as learners, and to respect community leaders as experts in their own right.

+ Hoy, Ariane, and Matthew Johnson, eds. 2013. Deepening Community Engagement in Higher Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hoy and Johnson collect diverse essays on approaches to community engagement in higher education that stress the role of students as civic-minded professionals in student development, as well as community-centred approaches for the institution to engage in more productive partnerships with community leaders as partners. The Bonner High Impact Initiative embraces this with the goal of transforming curricula, including approaches to engagement and institutional structures and practices. The authors hope to share their methods of engaging with communities as a means of allowing institutions to craft roles for themselves as stewards of place, civic learning, and agents of change. The essays included cover student leadership, pedagogy, institutional architecture, and community partnerships.

Φ Jay, Gregory. 2012. “The Engaged Humanities: Principles and Practices for Public Scholarship and Teaching.” Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship 3 (1): 51–63. (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Public Scholarship & Public Humanities)

+ Kondratova, Irina, and Ilia Goldfarb. 2004. “Virtual Communities of Practice: Design for Collaboration and Knowledge Creation.” In Proceedings of the European Conference on Products and Processes Modelling.

Kondratova and Goldfarb discuss knowledge dissemination and collaboration in online communities. They conduct a study on design functionality by looking at portal types that include institutional, governmental and organizational, professional, and social portals. The study includes 80 criteria grouped under content, discussion forum functionality, features, tools and learning modules, search functionality, membership, and topic experts. Based on this study, the authors develop a new template, as they believe further similar investigations are needed.

Levkoe, Charles Z., Amanda Wilson, and Victoria Schembri. 2018. “Community-Academic Peer Review: Prospects for Strengthening Community-Campus Engagement and Enriching Scholarship.” Engaged Scholars Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning 4 (2): 1–20.

Levkoe, Wilson, and Schembri consider peer review in the context of community-engaged research. They argue that not only is peer review problematic (read: overly conservative, gatekeeping) for academic publications, but that it is not wholly appropriate for community-engaged research projects since peer review is generally undertaken by academics only. They detail their efforts to broaden peer review by engaging non-academic community members and hybrid or liaison individuals (community members with academic training) in the review process. Levkoe, Wilson, and Schembri conclude that this process is valuable since it more fully embodies the ethos of community-engaged research, but acknowledge that it also bears certain challenges, namely around training community members in the review process and persuading them of the importance of such an activity.

Purcell, Jennifer, Andrew Pearl, and Trina Van Schyndel. 2020. “Boundary Spanning Among Community-Engaged Faculty: An Exploratory Study of Faculty Participating in Higher Education Community Engagement.” Engaged Scholars Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning 6 (2): 1–30.

Purcell, Pearl, and Van Schyndel explore the concept of boundary spanning within higher education community engagement practices. Boundary spanning, for the authors, is the act of liaising or translating between academic researchers and the community they are engaging with. Purcell, Pearl, and Van Schyndel consider higher education community engagement in general, and boundary spanning in particular, as imperative for the contemporary university. They outline skills necessary for boundary spanners and how these activities might evolve in future.

Ψ Salazar-Porzio, Margaret. 2015. “The Ecology of Arts and Humanities Education: Bridging the Worlds of Universities and Museums.” Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 14 (3): 274–92.

Salazar-Porzio discusses the vital importance of museums to the United States of America. She reflects on her own experiences as curator at the National Museum of American History (NMAH)—and those of students and professionals in the field—to emphasize the importance of museums in fostering civic education. This paper may be of interest to policymakers considering museum partnerships or creating arts funding plans, and to those working to foster civic learning. She concludes by saying that, because of their ability to teach civic skills, museums are essential to a democratic society.

Ψ Schuetze, Hans G. 2012. “Universities and Their Communities—Engagement and Service as Primary Mission.” In Higher Education and Civic Engagement: Comparative Perspectives, edited by Lorraine McIlrath, Ann Lyons, and Ronaldo Munck, 61–77. New York: Palgrave McMillan.

Schuetze discusses factors affecting universities and community engagement, sometimes considered a “third mission” alongside research and teaching (61). He discusses the historical role of community engagement, noting that while it was part of the founding missions of United States land-grant institutions, for example, it was emphasized less in European institutions. Schuetze points out that policymakers’ interest in community engagement has increased as the higher education market has become increasingly global and competitive, and the notion of community has changed, too. Universities, especially large ones, now serve a global research community as well as distance and international students in addition to their local students and communities. Types of local community engagement may include knowledge transfer, continuing education, and community-based research and service learning. Schuetze concludes that including community engagement in the university’s mission and strategic planning is a first step toward enacting it, but barriers remain to enacting it. When funding is scarce, universities tend to focus on research and teaching, and since reward systems tend to value research over teaching and service, faculty often see few incentives for community engagement. Because community engagement is not easily quantifiable, it is not usually included in university rankings, and funding for this work is often through competitive short-term grants, which does not support sustained engagement.

† Siemens, Lynne. 2009. “It’s a Team If You Use ‘Reply All’: An Exploration of Research Teams in Digital Humanities Environments.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 24 (2): 225–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqp009

Siemens identifies a singular contrast between traditional humanities research and digital humanities research: while traditionally the humanities as a discipline functioned as predominantly solo research efforts, the digital humanities involves various individuals with a wide spectrum of skills working together. Siemens argues that the collaborative nature of academic research communities, especially in the humanities, has been understudied. She fills that gap by examining the results of interviews conducted on the topics of teams, team-based work experiences, and team research preparation. The interviewees identify both benefits and challenges of team research, including rich interactions, relationship building with potential for future projects, communication challenges, funding, and team member retention. To conclude, Siemens articulates a list of five essential practices: (i) deliberate action by each team member; (ii) deliberate action by the project leader; (iii) deliberate action by the team; (iv) deliberate training; and (v) balance between digital and in-person communication.

+ Silka, Linda, G. Dean Cleghorn, Milago Grullon, and Trinidad Tellez. 2008. “Creating Community-Based Participatory Research in a Diverse Community: A Case Study.” Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics 3 (2): 5–16. https://doi.org/10.1525/jer.2008.3.2.5

Silka, Cleghorn, Grullon, and Tellez use their community-based participatory research group, the Lawrence Research Initiative Working Group (RIWG), as a case study for creating guidelines for ethical community-based research. The authors seek to move beyond the problems identified by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and begin to include tribal nations and research centres. The primary focus is to develop an ethical and non-exploitative relationship on the part of the institution. They introduce a set of guiding documents—the RIWG documents—that outline strategies for dealing with the challenges of multiple layers of partners, coping with changing committee memberships, and providing tips for technical research language to help strengthen communication. The research team recommends that other communities adapt the RIWG documents for their own use. They hope to shift understanding toward community decision making as a necessity rather than a luxury.

+ Silka, Linda, and Paulette Renault-Caragianes. 2006. “Community-University Research Partnerships: Devising a Model for Ethical Engagement.” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement 11 (2): 171–83.

Silka and Renault-Caragianes discuss the problems that have previously faced community-university partnerships. These partnerships often involve powerful university scholars with relatively disempowered community members. Funding agencies are now calling for researchers to set up partnerships in order to investigate health disparities in poor urban communities. The challenge currently facing this type of partnership is to move beyond existing guidelines that were not designed to provide ethical guidance, and to work with the community in establishing mutual respect. The research agenda, methods, usefulness, and purpose all need to be determined through discussions with the community.

+ Silka, Linda, and Robin Toof. 2011. “International Perspectives on Community-University Partnerships.” Metropolitan Universities Journal: An International Forum 22 (2): 3–162.

Silka and Toof claim that communities struggle to create research guidelines for ethical collaborative research within their localities. The authors use the Mayor’s Health Task Force Research Initiative Working Group from Lawrence, Massachusetts as a case study. The task force addresses research ethics in a community where families struggle with limited resources and face many health disparities. An earlier study on high levels of pollution in the area did not take the Lawrence area residents’ concerns seriously, and was unable to answer the community’s questions as to how their approaches to research were selected, who would receive the results, who would own the data, and what would be done with the saliva samples collected. Research committees must involve community members in discussions of how problems should be investigated and what purposes the research aims to achieve.

+ Sturm, Susan, Timothy Eatman, John Saltmarsh, and Adam Bush. 2011. Full Participation: Building the Architecture for Diversity and Public Engagement in Higher Education (white paper). Columbia University Law School: Center for Institutional and Social Change.

Sturm, Eatman, Saltmarsh, and Bush’s work grew out of the realization that the long-term success of diversity, public engagement, and student success initiatives requires that these efforts be more fully integrated into institutional settings. They explain their concept of full participation, which is an affirmative value focused on creating institutions that enable people to thrive and realize their capabilities. They note that a lack of integration of diversity, public engagement, and student success efforts in university architecture limits the efficacy and sustainability of the institution’s work. The authors argue that public engagement will encourage and enable full participation of diverse groups and communities, which is a critical attribute of legitimate and successful public engagement. The institutions that take account of public engagement enhance the legitimacy, levels of engagement, and robustness of higher education.

Whitmer, Ali, Laura Ogden, John Lawton, Pam Sturner, Peter M. Groffman, Laura Schneider, and David Hart. 2010. “The Engaged University: Providing a Platform for Research that Transforms Society.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 8 (6): 314–21. https://doi.org/10.1890/090241

Whitmer, Ogden, Lawton, Sturner, Groffman, Schneider, and Hart discuss how solutions to current environmental problems can be developed through collaborations between scientists and stakeholders. Societal partners are active throughout both the research and knowledge transfer processes. They are able to identify problems with conducting research and developing strategies for applying the outcomes of said work. The article provides some examples of science-related programs, including Georgetown University’s program on Science in the Public Interest, which promotes direct dialogue with engaged and interested public groups on critical scientific issues. The authors also address topics related to developing a peer community and sustainability issues in linking knowledge with action. According to the authors, institutions should evaluate faculty by recognizing research and activities that advance scientific knowledge and improve outcomes for human and natural systems.

Social Knowledge Creation, including Wikipedia & Crowdsourcing

Δ Arbuckle, Alyssa. 2019b. “Opportunities for Social Knowledge Creation in the Digital Humanities.” In Doing More Digital Humanities, 290–300. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429353048-20

Arbuckle addresses current discourse about digital humanities becoming more socially oriented, both regarding the collaboration and sharing with wider audiences, and the biased structures of the academy that impede open access publishing and the acknowledgement of scholarship as a social creation, disrupting the idea of the single author. She argues that digital humanities, as a field, is well poised to embrace social knowledge creation practices. Elements of the digital humanities landscape, such as the interconnected roles of collaboration, social media, publishing, technology, and open access contribute to an environment for sustained social knowledge creation. Despite these elements, Arbuckle claims that further action is still required for digital humanities research to become more valuable, engaging, and relevant in the public sphere. To encourage opportunities for social knowledge creation in digital humanities, academics must consider broad collaboration at the inception of their research initiatives, with its possibilities and risks.

+ Arbuckle, Alyssa, and Alex Christie, with the ETCL Research Group, INKE Research Group, and MVP Research Group. 2015. “Intersections Between Social Knowledge Creation and Critical Making.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6 (3): n.p. https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2015v6n3a200

Arbuckle and Christie outline the practices of digital scholarly communication (moving research production and dissemination online), critical making (producing theoretical insights by transforming digitized heritage materials), and social knowledge creation (collaborating in online environments to produce shared knowledge products). In addition to exploring these practices and their principles, the authors argue that combining these activities engenders knowledge production chains that connect multiple institutions and communities. Highlighting the relevance of critical making theory for scholarly communication practice, Arbuckle and Christie provide examples of theoretical research that offer tangible products for expanding and enriching scholarly production.

+ Bennett, W. Lance, ed. 2006. Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Bennett, in his introduction to the collection, suggests that younger generations are increasingly disconnected from conventional politics and government. However, the percentage of youth involved in civic engagement in non-governmental areas has increased. He explains that communication channels take many forms, including official communication tools and online social community networks. The collection’s authors discuss how online networks can inspire conventional political participation, and how digital technologies can be used to expand the boundaries of politics and public issues. In general, the authors suggest that there is a need for a transparent global debate about how digital media reshapes the expectations and prospects of youth in democratic societies.

† Berry, David M. 2012. “The Social Epistemologies of Software.” Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy 26 (3–4): 379–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2012.727191

Berry analyzes how code and software increasingly develop, influence, and depend on social epistemology or social knowledge creation. He discusses the highly mediated “computational ecologies” (379) that individuals and nonhuman actors inhabit, and argues that we need to become more aware of the role these computational ecologies play in daily social knowledge production. Berry analyzes two case studies to support his argument: the existence of web bugs or user activity trackers, and the development of lifestreams, real-time streams, and the quantified self. For Berry, the increasing embrace of and compliance with potentially insidious data collecting via the Internet and social media needs to be addressed.

Berson, Amber, Monika-Sengul Jones, and Melissa Tamani. 2021. Unreliable Guidelines: Reliable Sources and Marginalized Communities in French, English and Spanish Wikipedias. Art + Feminism.

Berson, Jones, and Tamani present a report on reliability guidelines for content creation in three Wikipedias: English, French, and Spanish. The authors argue that current reliability guidelines are Western-centric and exclusionary. Moreover, the authors suggest that these guidelines are used to police the boundaries around what is and is not acceptable to include on Wikipedia, to the detriment of marginalized Wikipedia editors. They provide a set of recommendations for reconstruing reliability guidelines in a way that does not replicate colonial and/or exclusionary knowledge creation and authority structures.

+ Bowen, William R., Matthew Hiebert, and Constance Crompton. 2014. “Iter Community: Prototyping an Environment for Social Knowledge Creation and Communication.” Scholarly and Research Communication 5 (4): n.p. https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2014v5n4a193

Bowen, Crompton, and Hiebert discuss the features and challenges of Iter Community, a collaborative research environment. They also discuss A Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript, focusing on its human and computer social engagement. The authors organize the article into three sections: 1) a historical and conceptual framework of Iter Community, 2) an update on the state of Iter Community (at writing), and 3) a perspective on A Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript. They conclude that Iter Community’s vision is to provide a flexible environment for communication, exchange, and collaboration, which will evolve with its participants’ priorities and challenges.

+ Bradley, Jean-Claude, Robert J. Lancashire, Andrew SID Lang, and Anthony J. Williams. 2009. “The Spectral Game: Leveraging Open Data and Crowd-Sourcing for Education.” Journal of Cheminformatics 1 (9): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1186/1758-2946-1-9

Bradley et al. use The Spectral Game to frame their discussion of leveraging open data and crowdsourcing techniques in education. The Spectral Game assists in the teaching of spectroscopy in an entertaining manner. It was created by combining open source spectral data, a spectrum-viewing tool, and appropriate workflows, and it delivers these resources through the game medium. The authors evaluate the game in an undergraduate organic chemistry class, and the authors argue that The Spectral Game demonstrates the importance of open data for remixing educational curriculum.

+ Bruns, Axel. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang.

Bruns’ book on blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and other virtual landscapes discusses how creative, collaborative, and ad hoc engagement with content in user-led spaces is no longer accurate. User-led content production is built instead on iterative and evolutionary development models in which large communities make a number of very small incremental changes to established knowledge bases. He uses the concept of produsage to describe changes to user-led content management systems. The comparative significance of distinction between producers and users of content has faded over time. The opening chapters detail open source software development; later ones move to case studies of news blogs, citizen journals, Wikipedia, and what he terms the produsage of folksonomies, referring to knowledge structures that encapsulate economic environments of their own. He discusses produsage in terms of education, video games, and creative structures, and concludes with a chapter on how democracy itself can be re-examined in light of the produsage structure.

† Burdick, Anne, Johanna Drucker, Todd Presner, Jeffrey Schnapp, and Peter Lunenfeld. 2012. “The Social Life of the Digital Humanities.” In Digital_Humanities, edited by Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp, 73–99. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Burdick et al. focus on the social aspects and impacts of digital humanities. The authors argue that the digital humanities, by nature, encompass academic and social spaces that discuss issues beyond technology alone. Key issues include open access, open source publications, the emergence of participatory web and social media technologies, collaborative authorship, crowdsourcing, knowledge creation, influence, authorization, and dissemination. Burdick et al. also consider the role of digital humanities in public spaces, beyond the siloed academy. The authors address these expansive issues through an oscillating approach of explanation and questioning. While the diversity of the topics in this chapter is substantial, the authors knit the arguments together under the broad theme of social engagement.

+ † Burke, Peter. 2000. A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Burke discusses the various agents and elements of social knowledge production with a specific focus on intellectuals and Europe in the early modern period (until c. 1750). He argues that knowledge is always plural and that various types of knowledge develop, surface, intersect, and play concurrently. Burke relies on sociology, including the work of Émile Durkheim, and critical theory, including the work of Michel Foucault, as a basis to develop his own notions of social knowledge production. He acknowledges that the church, scholarly institutions, the government, and the printing press have all had a significant effect on knowledge production and dissemination, often affirmatively but occasionally through restriction or containment. Furthermore, Burke explores how both “heretics” (humanist revolutionaries) and more conventional academic structures developed the university as a knowledge institution.

† Burke, Peter. 2012. A Social History of Knowledge II: From the Encyclopedie to Wikipedia. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Burke develops his research from the first volume (A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot) by expanding his scope from the early modern period into the twentieth century. He continues to rely on certain foundational notions for this volume: knowledge is plural and varied; knowledge is produced by various institutions and conditions instead of solely by individuals; and the social production of knowledge is intrinsically connected to the economic and political environments in which it develops. As with the first volume, Burke focuses mainly on academic knowledge, with brief forays into other forms or sites of knowledge.

+ † Carletti, Laura, Derek McAuley, Dominic Price, Gabriella Giannachi, and Steve Benford. 2013. “Digital Humanities and Crowdsourcing: An Exploration.” Museums and the Web 2013 Conference. Portland: Museums and the Web. http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/digital-humanities-and-crowdsourcing-an-exploration-4/

Carletti, McAuley, Price, Giannachi, and Benford survey and identify emerging practices in current crowdsourcing projects in the digital humanities. Carletti et al. base their understanding of crowdsourcing on an earlier definition of crowdsourcing as an online, voluntary activity that connects individuals to an initiative via an open call (Estelles-Arolas and Gonzalez-Ladron-de-Guevara 2012). This definition was used to select the case studies for the current research. The researchers found two major trends in the 36 initiatives included in the study: crowdsourcing projects either use the crowd to (a) integrate/enrich/configure existing resources or (b) create/contribute new resources. Generally, crowdsourcing projects asked volunteers to contribute in terms of curating, revising, locating, sharing, documenting, or enriching materials. The 36 initiatives surveyed were divided into three categories in terms of project aims: public engagement, enriching resources, and building resources.

+ † Causer, Tim, and Melissa Terras. 2014. “Crowdsourcing Bentham: Beyond the Traditional Boundaries of Academic History.” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 8 (1): 46–64. https://doi.org/10.3366/ijhac.2014.0119

Causer and Terras reflect on some of the key discoveries that were made in the Transcribe Bentham crowdsourced initiative. Transcribe Bentham was launched with the intention of demonstrating that crowdsourcing can be used successfully for both scholarly work and public engagement by allowing all types of participants to access and explore cultural material. Causer and Terras note that the majority of the work on Transcribe Bentham was undertaken by a small percentage of users, or “super transcribers.” Only 15% of the users have completed any transcription and approximately 66% of those users have transcribed only a single document—leaving a very select number of individuals responsible for the core of the project’s production. The authors illustrate how some of the user transcription has contributed to our understanding of some of Jeremy Bentham’s central values: animal rights, politics, and prison conditions. Overall, Causer and Terras demonstrate how scholarly transcription undertaken by a wide, online audience can uncover essential material.

+ † Causer, Tim, Justin Tonra, and Valerie Wallace. 2012. “Transcription Maximized; Expense Minimized? Crowdsourcing and Editing The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (formerly Literary and Linguistic Computing) 27 (2): 119–37. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqs004

Causer, Tonra, and Wallace discuss the advantages and disadvantages of user-generated manuscript transcription using the Transcribe Bentham project as a case study. The intention of the project is to engage the public with the thoughts and works of Jeremy Bentham through creating a digital, searchable repository of his manuscript writings. Causer, Tonra, and Wallace preface this article by setting out five key factors the team hoped to assess in terms of the potential benefits of crowdsourcing: cost effectiveness, exploitation, quality control, sustainability, and success. Evidence from the project showcases the great potential for open access TEI-XML transcriptions in creating a long-term, sustainable archive. Additionally, users reported that they were motivated by a sense of contributing to a greater good and/or recognition. In the experience of Transcribe Bentham, crowdsourcing transcription may not have been the cheapest, quickest, or easiest route; the authors argue, however, that projects with a longer time-scale may find this method both self-sufficient and cost-effective.

† Causer, Tim, and Valerie Wallace. 2012. “Building a Volunteer Community: Results and Findings from ‘Transcribe Bentham.’” Digital Humanities Quarterly 6 (2). http://digitalhumanities.org:8081/dhq/vol/6/2/000125/000125.html

Causer and Wallace reflect on the experience of generating users and materials for the crowdsourced Transcribe Bentham project. The purpose of the Transcribe Bentham project is to create an open source repository of Jeremy Bentham’s papers that relies on volunteers transcribing the manuscripts. Causer and Wallace argue that crowdsourcing is a viable and effective strategy only if it is well facilitated and gathers a group of willing volunteers. They found that retaining users was just as integral to the success of the project as was recruiting. It was important, therefore, that they build a sense of community through outreach, social media, and reward systems. The number of active users involved in Transcribe Bentham was greatly affected by media publicity. Users reported that friendly competition motivated them to participate, but that an overall lack of time limited their contributions.

+ † Crompton, Constance, Raymond G. Siemens, and Alyssa Arbuckle, with the Devonshire Manuscript Editorial Group. 2015. “Enlisting ‘Vertues Noble & Excelent’: Behavior, Credit, and Knowledge Organization in the Social Edition.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 9 (2): n.p. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/2/000202/000202.html

Crompton, Siemens, and Arbuckle consider the gender factors involved in social editions, drawing on their experience developing A Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript: a Wikibooks edition of the sixteenth century multi-author verse miscellany, the Devonshire Manuscript. The authors argue that while the Wikimedia suite can often devolve into openly hostile online spaces, Wikimedia projects remain important for the contemporary circulation of knowledge. The key, for the authors, is to encourage gender equity in social behavior, credit sharing, and knowledge organization in Wikimedia, rather than abandoning it for a more controlled collaborative environment for edition production and dissemination.

+ Deuze, Mark, Axel Bruns, and Christopher Neuberger. 2007. “Preparing for an Age of Participatory News.” Journalism Practice 1 (3): 322–38.

Deuze, Bruns, and Neuberger argue that journalism must rethink and reinvent itself in the wake of declining public trust in news. The authors believe that news journalism will be gathered, selected, edited, and communicated by professionals, amateurs, producers, and consumers. The authors include findings from emerging practices in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and the United States. The four case studies used are the American Bluffton Today, the Dutch Skoeps, the German Opinio, and the Australian On Line Opinion. These digital resources, the authors argue, provide clear and workable alternatives to the standard separation of journalists, their sources, and the public. Due to the highly accessible flow of information available digitally to the public, journalism can no longer leave large sections of the citizenry disenfranchised from participation, nor omit valuable insights into political and social processes.

Estellés-Arolas, Enrique, and Fernando González-Ladrón-de-Guevara. 2012. “Towards an Integrated Crowdsourcing Definition.” Journal of Information Science 38 (2): 189–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551512437638

Estellés-Arolas and González-Ladrón-de-Guevara present an encompassing definition of crowdsourcing, arguing that the flexibility of crowdsourcing is what makes it challenging to define. They demonstrate that, depending on perspective, researchers can have vastly divergent understandings of crowdsourcing. By conducting a detailed study of current understandings of the practice, Estellés-Arolas and González-Ladrón de-Guevara form a global definition that facilitates the distinguishing and formalizing of crowdsourcing activities. Using textual analysis, the authors identify crowdsourcing’s three key elements: the crowd, the initiator, and the process. They advance a comprehensive definition that highlights the individuals, tasks, roles, and returns associated with crowdsourcing. They present a verification table, with nine categories, that can be used to determine whether or not an initiative falls into the classification of crowdsourcing. Estellés-Arolas and González-Ladrón-de-Guevara suggest that further research should be done to understand the relationship between crowdsourcing and other associated concepts, such as outsourcing.

† Ghosh, Arpita, Satyen Kale, and Preston McAfee. 2011. “Who Moderates the Moderators?: Crowdsourcing Abuse Detection in User-Generated Content.” In Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, 167–76. EC ’11. New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/1993574.1993599

Ghosh, Kale, and McAfee address the issue of how to moderate the ratings of users with unknown reliability. They propose an algorithm that can detect abusive content and spam, starting with approximately 50% accuracy on the basis of one example of good content, and reaching complete accuracy after a number of entries based on machine-learning techniques. They believe that rating each individual contribution is a better approach than rating the users themselves based on their past behaviour, as most platforms do. According to the authors, this algorithm may be a stepping-stone in determining more complex ratings by users with unknown reliability.

Gruwell, Leigh. 2015. “Wikipedia’s Politics of Exclusion: Gender, Epistemology, and Feminist Rhetorical (In)Action.” Computers and Composition 37: 117–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2015.06.009

Gruwell juxtaposes feminist epistemology with the normative regulation of content creation on Wikipedia. For Gruwell, the insistence in the platform on objective, impersonal, and unbiased content is directly at odds with feminist understandings of knowledge creation as embodied, situated, personal, and contextual (following thinkers like Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding). The author undertakes a study of women who edit on Wikipedia to better understand their experiences with the platform, and concludes that Wikipedia’s norms have a homogenizing effect on the content developed for it.

Ψ Hendery, Rachel, and Jason Gibson. 2019. “Crowdsourcing Downunder.” KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 3 (February): 22. https://doi.org/10.5334/kula.52

Hendery and Gibson discuss the strengths and weaknesses of crowdsourcing projects in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector, taking as their case studies two Australian crowdsourcing projects: the Mapping Print, Charting Enlightenment (MPCE) project and the Howitt and Fison’s Archive (Howitt & Fison) project. They compare Howitt & Fison to the pioneering crowdsourcing project, Transcribe Bentham, and note that in both cases paid transcription labour could have produced a greater output due to the large time investment required for volunteer recruitment, training, and support. The MPCE, however, did target paid academic scholars, but it was found that alternatives, such as automation through machine learning, were more efficient. This is likely because crowdsourcing is not yet seen as legitimate academic labour. Hendery and Gibson argue that, even if most regular contributions are made by a small number of active volunteers, crowdsourcing is a viable method of non-traditional scholarship because Australian funding institutions see it as a means for public impact and engagement.

+ Hiebert, Matthew, William R. Bowen, and Raymond Siemens. 2015. “Implementing a Social Knowledge Creation Environment.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6 (3). https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2015v6n3a223

Hiebert, Bowen, and Siemens introduce Iter Community, a public-facing web-based platform prototyped by the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab and Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with a specific focus on how this platform is geared toward facilitating social knowledge creation. The authors argue that the emerging area of research known as social knowledge creation promotes critical interventions into the more conventional processes of academic knowledge productions. This type of research is increasingly made more convenient by emerging technologies that allow research groups to more actively participate in and contribute to the dissemination of their work and communication with other partners. The Iter Community page is meant as a critical intervention into modes of scholarly production and publication, and models how the implementation of functionalities that support social knowledge creation can facilitate novel research opportunities and invite scholars and members of the community to participate in the creation of knowledge. The platform facilitates online knowledge production and dissemination in ways that ultimately enhance research practices and community outreach.

+† Holley, Rose. 2010. “Crowdsourcing: How and Why Should Libraries Do It?” D-Lib Magazine 16 (3/4): n.p. https://doi.org/10.1045/march2010-holley

Holley defines crowdsourcing and makes a number of practical suggestions to assist with launching a crowdsourcing project. She asserts that crowdsourcing uses social engagement techniques to help a group of people work together on a shared, usually significant initiative. The fundamental principle of a crowdsourcing project is that it entails greater effort, time, and intellectual input than is available from a single individual, thereby requiring broader social engagement. Holley’s argument is that libraries are already proficient at public engagement but need to improve how they work toward shared group goals. She suggests 10 basic practices to assist libraries in successfully implementing crowdsourcing. Many of these recommendations centre on project transparency and motivating users.

Jemielniak, Dariusz, and Eduard Aibar. 2016. “Bridging the Gap between Wikipedia and Academia.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 67 (7): 1773–76. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23691

Jemielniak and Aibar consider the relationship between the professoriate and Wikipedia. They recommend that professors become more involved with the open, online encyclopedia. Jemielniak and Aibar cover earlier academic objections to Wikipedia and suggest that many professors do not use the site since they do not see their colleagues use the site. For the authors, engaging with Wikipedia provides a valid and beneficial pedagogical exercise, benefits broader society by improving the quality of information available, and helps to spread one’s research more widely.

Φ Kondratova, Irina, and Ilia Goldfarb. 2004. “Virtual Communities of Practice: Design for Collaboration and Knowledge Creation.” In Proceedings of the European Conference on Products and Processes Modelling. (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Collaboration, Partnership, & Engagement)

+ Lin, Carolyn A., and David J. Atkin. 2007. Communication Technology and Social Change: Theory and Implications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Lin and Atkin edit this anthology that discusses significant outcomes of technology adoption and uses. Throughout the volume, authors explain how communication and information technologies facilitate social change. The editors organized the collection of essays to enhance the understanding of these social change outcomes by readers, scholars, students, and practitioners from a theoretical standpoint that examines the effects of communication technology on different social environments. The technologies examined by the authors include video and home entertainment, online technology education and entertainment, and cultural attitudes toward paper and electronic documents. The editors argue from the standpoint of social change, namely that advancements in communication technology have shaped political perspectives around the globe toward, for example, the Iraq War.

+† Manzo, Christina, Geoff Kaufman, Sukdith Punjashitkul, and Mary Flanagan. 2015. “‘By the People, For the People’: Assessing the Value of Crowdsourced, User-Generated Metadata.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 9 (1): n.p. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/1/000204/000204.html

Manzo, Kaufman, Punjashitkul, and Flanagan make a case for the usefulness of folksonomy tagging when combined with categorical tagging in crowdsourced projects. The authors open with a defense of categorization by arguing that classification systems reflect collection qualities while allowing for efficient retrieval of materials. However, they admit that these positive effects are often diminished by the use of folksonomy tagging, which promotes self-referential and personal task organizing labels. The authors suggest that a mixed system of folksonomic and controlled vocabularies be put into play in order to maximize the benefits of both approaches while minimizing their challenges. This is demonstrated through an empirical experiment in labeling images from the Leslie Jones Collection of the Boston Public Library, followed by evaluating the helpfulness of the tags.

+ Mayer, Amy. 2010. “Phenology and Citizen Science.” BioScience 60 (3): 172–75. https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2010.60.3.3

Mayer argues that phenology—the relationship between annual events and seasonal changes, such as observing the bloom of flowers—lends itself to citizen science when many people record these observations. Mayer addresses the data quality issue and states that evidence from various studies shows that clear and straightforward instructions result in reliable data from volunteers. She discusses various recent and long-term phenology projects, such as the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and Feedwatcher, with a specific focus on how both projects address the challenge of sustaining ongoing citizen observations. This is an issue in phenology, since long-term observations over years are what add real value to a project. Another issue is that such long-term research is not compatible with traditional funding agencies, since they often give out shorter term grants than such research requires.

† Pfister, Damien Smith. 2011. “Networked Expertise in the Era of Many-to-Many Communication: On Wikipedia and Invention.” Social Epistemology 25 (3): 217–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2011.578306

Pfister argues that Wikipedia is a prime example and facilitator of contemporary many-to-many communication structures and the resultant changing nature of knowledge production. He advocates for many-to-many communication because it disrupts traditional knowledge practices that depend on specialized experts to disseminate knowledge through carefully regulated channels and institutions. Furthermore, social knowledge creation spaces like Wikipedia induce productive epistemic turbulence through multivocal authorship, arguments, and collaboration. Pfister champions this networked or participatory expertise as a more democratic, representative, and therefore less hierarchical model of communication.

Ridge, Mia. 2013. “From Tagging to Theorizing: Deepening Engagement with Cultural Heritage through Crowdsourcing.” Curator 56 (4): 435–50.

Ridge reviews the relationship between crowdsourcing and cultural heritage material. She argues that public interaction with a museum or library’s holdings fosters participants’ sustained interest and satisfaction. Ridge surveys crowdsourcing in GLAM institutions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), and considers the difference between crowdsourcing and other user-generated content, like survey feedback. She outlines effective techniques for developing crowdsourcing projects, including the integration of games and conscientious design that employs appropriate scaffolding. Ridge underscores the importance of acknowledging crowdsourcing as a public engagement activity, even if the “crowd” and the project initiators never meet face-to-face.

Rockwell, Geoffrey. 2012. “Crowdsourcing the Humanities: Social Research and Collaboration.” Collaborative Research in the Digital Humanities, edited by Marilyn Deegan and Willard McCarty, 135–54. Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing.

Rockwell suggests that crowdsourcing and other community-involved projects offer a path for engaging publics more readily and reasserting the value of the humanities. He argues that regardless of one’s opinion on the role of collaboration in the humanities, scholars need to reconsider the prevalence and value of distributed knowledge, and of projects that purposefully facilitate social knowledge creation. To illustrate his claims, Rockwell provides examples of social knowledge creation projects he has been involved with, including the “Dictionary of Words in the Wild” and the “Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities” (now simply known as “Day of DH”). He nods to other commonly cited crowdsourcing projects like Wikipedia and Transcribe Bentham. Based on his experience, Rockwell offers advice for others undertaking crowdsourcing or social knowledge-based projects.

+† Rosenzweig, Roy. 2006. “Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past.” The Journal of American History 93 (1): 117–46. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/4486062

Rosenzweig claims that the field of open source software development is notoriously individualistic. He notes that only 6% of over 32,000 scholarly works indexed since 2000 have more than one author, and less than 2% have three or more authors. Rosenzweig argues that the cooperation and freedom of Wikipedia have transformed it into the most important demonstration of the principles of free and open source software movement. He discusses Wikipedia as both a tool for historiography as well as how it can be understood as an expression of history itself. According to the author, professional historians should pay attention to Wikipedia because students do. Wikipedia and Linux demonstrate that there are alternative models to produce encyclopedias and software other than the hierarchical, commercial model represented by Microsoft.

† Ross, Stephen, Alex Christie, and Jentery Sayers. 2014. “Expert/Crowd-Sourcing for the Linked Modernisms Project.” Scholarly and Research Communication 5 (4). http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/viewFile/186/368

Ross, Christie, and Sayers discuss the creation and evolution of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded Linked Modernisms Project. The authors demonstrate how the project negotiates the productive study of both individual works and the larger field of cultural modernism through the use of digital, visual, and networked methods. Linked Modernisms employs a four-tier information matrix to accumulate user-generated survey data about modernist materials. The authors argue that the resulting information allows serendipitous encounters with data, and emphasizes discoverability. Linked Modernisms is focused on developing modes of scholarly publication that line up with the dynamic nature of the data and comply with the principles of open access.

† Siemens, Raymond G., Meagan Timney, Cara Leitch, Corina Koolen, and Alex Garnett, with the ETCL, INKE, and PKP Research Groups. 2012. “Toward Modeling the Social Edition: An Approach to Understanding the Electronic Scholarly Edition in the Context of New and Emerging Social Media.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (formerly Literary and Linguistic Computing) 27 (4): 445–61. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqs013

Siemens, Timney, Leitch, Koolen, Garnett, et al. present a vision of an emerging manifestation of the scholarly digital edition: the social edition. The authors ruminate on both the potential and already-realized intersections between scholarly digital editing and social media. For Siemens et al., many scholarly digital editions do not readily employ the collaborative electronic tools available for use in a scholarly context. The authors seek to remediate this lack of engagement, especially concerning opportunities to integrate collaborative annotation, user-derived content, folksonomy tagging, community bibliography, and text analysis capabilities within a digital edition. Furthermore, Siemens et al. envision the conceptual role of the editor—traditionally a single authoritative individual—as a reflection of facilitation rather than of didactic authority. A social edition predicated on these shifts and amendments would allow for increased social knowledge creation by a community of readers and scholars, academics and citizens alike.

Shane-Simpson, Christina, and Kristen Gillespie-Lynch. 2017. “Examining Potential Mechanisms Underlying the Wikipedia Gender Gap through a Collaborative Editing Task.” Computers in Human Behavior l (66): 312–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.09.043

Shane-Simpson and Gillespie-Lynch consider what is known as the Wikipedia gender gap, i.e., the disproportionate number of self-identified male vs. female Wikipedia editors. Through their simulated study the authors find that women actually tend to develop more content than men, but their edits are more likely to be reverted and they are more likely to stop editing when given negative feedback. Such an analysis indicates that the lack of women editing on Wikipedia is not necessarily due to a lack of confidence with technology or coding, as some have speculated, but rather a disinclination toward confrontational spaces featuring negativity. Shane-Simpson and Gillespie-Lynch conclude that the use of more constructive feedback on Wikipedia could help rectify the gender gap.

+ Silvertown, Jonathan. 2009. “A New Dawn for Citizen Science.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 24 (9): 467–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2009.03.017

Silvertown calls attention to burgeoning citizen science projects, especially in environmental sciences, and addresses the main underlying reasons for such exponential growth. The first is the availability of tools that facilitate the gathering and dissemination of information to and from the public by the volunteers themselves. The second is the fact that citizen science is carried out by volunteers who bring a diverse set of skills, thereby significantly cutting down on project costs. Finally, he states that present funding agencies require scientific research to incorporate an element of project-related outreach, and a means to ensure that the public values taxpayer-funded work; having members of the public directly participate in scientific research allows them to reach this goal. Despite its established roots, dating from the nineteenth century, the author points out that citizen science is underrepresented in formal scientific literature because the term itself is fairly recent and the practice has yet to fit within the standard methods of scientific research that are based on hypothesis testing. He concludes by pointing to guidelines for good practice in citizen science, outlining various challenges that may spring up, and arguing for the benefits of citizen science in large-scale projects.

Terras, Melissa. 2017. “Crowdsourcing in the Digital Humanities.” In A New Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, 420–39. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Terras explains the role of digital crowdsourcing as a methodology for research on history, culture, heritage, and the humanities in general. She argues that scholars who work in digital humanities should support students who want to become a part of crowdsourcing and create a project in the field of humanities. Moreover, she believes that by encouraging more people to participate in projects related to the humanities we can create a better society that will be more aware of its cultural and social inheritance. Finally, Terras concludes that the development of crowdsourcing in this area can contribute to better access to information about heritage, history, and culture, and that this can, in turn, encourage a wider audience.

† Van House, Nancy A. 2003. “Digital Libraries and Collaborative Knowledge Construction.” In Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation, edited by Ann Peterson Bishop, Nancy A. Van House, and Barbara P. Buttenfield, 271–95. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Van House reminds her readers that libraries are more than just storehouses; libraries comprehensively support and foster knowledge creation. Consequently, she claims, designing and building effective digital libraries depends on a thorough understanding of knowledge work. For Van House, the emergence of digital libraries represents a significant shift in how individuals and communities create knowledge. Digital libraries often foster transgressive, situated, distributed, and social networks of research and knowledge production. Notably, she reinforces the concept that artifacts are not knowledge in and of themselves; knowledge is a complex social phenomenon rooted in contact, daily practice, and partial mediation by artifacts. As such, digital libraries function differently than as mere conduits—digital libraries are boundary objects, and they affect knowledge work significantly by introducing variation in terms of manipulability, credibility, inscription, access, and organization.

+† Vandendorpe, Christian. 2012. “Wikisource and the Scholarly Book.” Scholarly and Research Communication 3 (4): n.p. https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2012v3n4a58

Vandendorpe contemplates Wikisource, a project of the Wikimedia foundation, as a potential platform for reading and editing scholarly books. He comes to this conclusion after considering what the ideal e-book or digital knowledge environment should look like. For Vandendorpe, this artifact must be available on the web; reflect the metaphor of a forest of knowledge, rather than a container; situate the reader at the centre of the experience; and be open, reliable, robust, and expandable. Wikisource, the author concludes, has the potential to meet these criteria. Vandendorpe highlights that Wikisource enables quality editing and robust versioning, and has various display options. He also outlines areas of development for Wikisource to become an ideal candidate for hosting the aforementioned type of knowledge creation.

† Vandendorpe, Christian. 2015. “Wikipedia and the Ecosystem of Knowledge.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6 (3). http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/201

Vandendorpe argues for the broad uptake of Wikipedia across the academy, contending that researchers need to edit on Wikipedia and to share their specialized knowledge with the rest of the world. In this way, Vandendorpe argues, scholars can easily share their findings broadly and publicly. He emphasizes online, popular, and open access environments in the growing media ecology that supports scholarly communication. Vandendorpe champions the opportunities afforded by serious academic engagement with Wikipedia.

Veletsianos, George, and Royce Kimmons. 2012. “Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent Techno-Cultural Pressures Toward Open and Digital Scholarship in Online Networks.” Computers & Education 58 (2): 766–74.

Veletsianos and Kimmons explore the possibly causal, possibly correlated relationship between contemporary scholarly practice and technology. In particular, they argue that specific scholarly practices have emerged that are situated squarely in online social spaces, deeming such practices Networked Participatory Scholarship. Networked Participatory Scholarship encapsulates non-traditional scholarly communication activities such as social networking on Twitter and writing a personal blog. These activities, while still occurring in the realm of the academy, look very different from more formalized scholarly communication like publishing a peer-reviewed print article. The authors conclude that the academy will continue to develop and change as technology does, and that it is crucial to both track and support scholarly practices that embrace and respond to (inevitable) technological change rather than resist it.

† Walsh, Brandon, Claire Maiers, Gwen Nally, and Jeremy Boggs. 2014. “Crowdsourcing Individual Interpretations: Between Microtasking and Macrotasking.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 29 (3): 379–86. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqu030

Walsh, Maiers, Nally, Boggs, et al. track the creation of Prism, an individual text markup tool developed by the Praxis Program at the University of Virginia. Prism was conceived in response to Jerome McGann’s call for textual markup tools that foreground subjectivity, as the tool illustrates how different groups of readers engage with a text. Prism is designed to assist with projects that blend two approaches to crowdsourcing: microtasking and macrotasking. A compelling quality of Prism is that it balances the constraint necessary for generating productive metadata with the flexibility necessary for facilitating social, negotiable interactions with the textual object. In that way, Prism is poised to redefine crowdsourcing in the digital humanities.

Wiggins, Andrea, and Kevin Crowston. 2011. “From Conservation to Crowdsourcing: A Typology of Citizen Science.” In 2011 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1109/ HICSS.2011.207

Wiggins and Crowston engage in a discussion of citizen science in terms of the common attributes many projects share and attempt to provide a theoretical sampling that future citizen science projects may rely on. The authors argue that the majority of scholarship on citizen science is invested in describing the process of integrating volunteers into the various levels of scientific research, without taking into account the macrostructural and sociotechnical factors. They believe that this comes at the expense of crucial design and process management. Wiggins and Crowston identify and discuss five distinct typologies witnessed in various citizen science projects: action, conservation, investigation, virtuality, and education. The authors classify these typologies by major goals and the extent to which they are virtual. One of the main motivations for developing these typologies is to describe the existing state of citizen science and to make accessible the necessary conditions for successful citizen science projects.

Willinsky, John. 2007. “What Open Access Research Can Do for Wikipedia.” First Monday 12 (3): n.p. https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/1624/1539?inline=1

Willinsky interrogates the degree to which Wikipedia entries cite or reference scholarship, and whether this research is generally available to readers in open access format. The author is interested in whether contributors are taking advantage of the growing amount of open access research available to them. To study this, Willinsky randomly selected 100 Wikipedia entries, which reference 168 resources. Of those 168 resources, only 2% point to open access scholarly research. Given these findings, Willinsky argues that more can be done to enhance Wikipedia, and to bolster the current state of knowledge provided by the online encyclopedia. Wikipedia, Willinsky argues, should be used as a platform to springboard open access initiatives and circulate materials in an accessible way for the entire Internet community. If the platform were to become more of an entry point, researchers and scholars would have greater motivation to make their work open access.

Research Creation in Theory & Practice

Balyasnikova, Natalia, and Kedrick James. 2020. “PhoneMe Poetry: Mapping Community in the Digital Age.” Engaged Scholars Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning 6 (2): 107–16.

Balyasnikova and James introduce the PhoneMe initiative, a community-based research creation project designed by University of British Columbia researchers and centred in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (known as the DTES). The PhoneMe project facilitated the creation and sharing of place-based poetry using a blend of in-person and digital methods. The authors suggest that this project was a worthwhile undertaking as it supported and gave back to the community participants, in contrast to what is known as the parachute approach when researchers drop into a community to extract research findings and then leave. They also, however, acknowledge the PhoneMe project’s limitation in scope and diversity and outline how they are addressing these issues in subsequent phases.

Φ+ Bradley, Jean-Claude, Robert J. Lancashire, Andrew SID Lang, and Anthony J. Williams. 2009. “The Spectral Game: Leveraging Open Data and Crowd-Sourcing for Education.” Journal of Cheminformatics 1 (9): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1186/1758-2946-1-9 (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Social Knowledge Creation, including Wikipedia & Crowdsourcing)

† Cao, Qilin, Yong Lu, Dayong Dong, Zongming Tang, and Yongqiang Li. 2013. “The Roles of Bridging and Bonding in Social Media Communities.” Journal of American Society for Information Science and Technology 64 (8): 1671–81. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22866

Cao, Lu, Dong, Tang, and Li develop a theoretical model investigating the contribution of bonding (social networks among homogeneous groups) and bridging (social networks among heterogeneous groups) to the individual and collective well-being of virtual communities, through information exchange. They argue that bridging and bonding have positive implications for information quality but not quantity, also noting that information quality is more critical than information quantity after a disaster. They situate their work within the social capital theory, referring to Nan Lin (“Social Networks and Status Attainment,” 1999), Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J.D. Wacquant (An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 1992), and Mamata Bhandar, Shan-Ling Pan, and Bernard C. Y. Tan (“Towards Understanding the Roles of Social Capital in Knowledge Integration: A Case Study of a Collaborative Information Systems Project,” 2007). The authors conclude that bonding has an impact on bridging, and that both have a positive impact on information quality.

Chapman, Owen, and Kim Sawchuck. 2012. “Research-Creation: Intervention, Analysis, and “Family Resemblances.’” Canadian Journal of Communication 37: 5–26.

Chapman and Sawchuck consider the concept of research creation and how it figures in contemporary academic production and discourse. They argue that research creation has the potential to challenge more conservative academic modes and methods of knowledge creation. For Chapman and Sawchuck, research creation is an innovative approach to academic production that dovetails nicely with fields like the digital humanities and can contribute to its development, practices, and relevance—as long as a sufficiently robust definition of research creation is accepted and understood in the academic community. Moreover, the authors suggest, research creation not only challenges current academic practice but, in fact, expands it into more introspective, processual, and creative forms.

Cuffe, Honae H. 2019. “Lend Me Your Ears: The Rise of the History Podcast in Australia.” History Australia 16 (3): 553–69.

Cuffe examines the role of the history podcast in the Australian context. She glosses a selection of Australian history podcasts—some overtly academic, some not—and concludes that this is an important mechanism for translating historical work (and even historiography) to broader publics. Cuffe acknowledges the challenges of history podcasts in the academic context, namely that there is pushback from those who do not consider knowledge translation worthwhile or intellectually robust, and recognizes that it is difficult to have such work counted in the current metrics-obsessed academic world. Regardless, she still suggests that there is significant value to podcasting, since it both centres a scholarly expert’s voice and invites listeners into the academic process.

Duffy, Brooke Erin, and Jefferson Pooley. 2017. “‘Facebook for Academics’: The Convergence of Self-Branding and Social Media Logic on Academia.edu.” Social Media + Society 3.

Duffy and Pooley describe the growing trend of academics engaging in self-promoting practices such as creating and maintaining a brand for themselves, especially in the digital world. They analyze Academia.edu’s Silicon Valley startup aesthetic and business model, as well as the social culture manifested on the site, in order to argue that the popularity of scholarly social networking sites such as Academia.edu is tied to—but also compounds—the intense pressures academics face to market themselves and their work. Duffy and Pooley pinpoint the social media characteristics of Academia.edu, such as the prioritization of feedback mechanisms, analytics, and user-generated materials. These elements contribute to the authors’ assertions that Academia.edu goes hand-in-hand with unhealthy aspects of academic culture within the neoliberal university. The authors conclude with a warning about the risks of sites like Academia.edu causing academics to internalize market pressures, as well as Academia.edu’s guise as a for-profit company with enormous collections of user data and membership barriers to access while purporting to be a viable path to an open access future.

+ Dumova, Tatyana. 2012. “Social Interaction Technologies and the Future of Blogging.” In Blogging in the Global Society: Cultural, Political and Geographical Aspects, edited by Tatyana Dumova, and Richard Fiordo, 249–74. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

Dumova addresses the social potential of blogging centres and the ways in which blogs permit people to engage in social interactions, build connections, and collaborate with others. She argues that blogging should not be studied in isolation from the social media clusters that function together to sustain each other. She also notes that blogging is an international phenomenon, since over 60% of all blogs created after the 1990s are written in languages other than English. Next, Dumova broadly traces the development of blog publishing platforms. She concludes that network-based peer production and social media convergence are the driving forces behind the current transformation of blogs to increasingly user-centric, user-driven practices of producing, searching, sharing, publishing, and distributing information.

Kimbro, Devori, Michael Noschka, and Geoffrey Way. 2019. “Lend Us Your Earbuds: Shakespeare/Podcasting/Poesis.” Humanities 8 (67): 1–12.

Kimbro, Noschka, and Way ruminate on the relation between podcasts and Shakespeare studies. Not only do the authors suggest that Shakespeare scholars should create podcasts in order to engage with broader publics, but they also consider how the podcast is akin to other emergent, popularizing communication technologies from Shakespeare’s time (like printing) as well as where Shakespeare shows up in current, well-trafficked podcasts. For Kimbro, Noschka, and Way, the connection between Shakespeare and podcasts makes sense from historical, literary, academic, and public engagement perspectives.

kopas, merritt. 2015. Introduction to Videogames for Humans, 5–19. New York: Instar Books.

kopas introduces her edited collection, Videogames for Humans, as an intervention into both the games studies and literary studies worlds, as well as a reflection on the Twine community. For kopas, Twine offers an opportunity for storytellers and amateur game designers to create their own interactive narrators on the margins of more mainstream media creation. The author blends her own academic experience and research with the creative and community engagement possibilities of Twine. Overall, she demonstrates how Twine can serve artistic, knowledge creation, research, personal, and community purposes.

Lampe, Cliff, Robert LaRose, Charles Steinfield, and Kurt DeMaagd. 2011. “Inherent Barriers to the Use of Social Media for Public Policy Informatics.” The Innovation Journal 16 (1): 1–17.

Lampe, LaRose, Steinfield and DeMaagd address the barriers to social media use for public policy informatics. For the authors, social media has the potential to foster interactions between policymakers, government officials, and their constituencies. The authors refer to this framework as Governance 2.0 and use AdvanceMichigan as a case study. AdvanceMichigan is a social media implementation designed to crowdsource feedback from stakeholders of Michigan State University Cooperative Extension. This organization approaches the education process in such a way that students can apply their knowledge to a range of critical issues, needs, and opportunities. The organization is planning to return to traditional methods for collecting data from stakeholders due to the challenges of crowdsourcing data. The authors conclude with a discussion on how to create compelling technologies tailored to correctly scaled tasks for an audience who are likely to use social media sites.

Letierce, Julie, Alexandre Passant, John Breslin, and Stefan Decker. 2010. “Understanding How Twitter Is Used to Spread Scientific Messages.” Proceedings of the WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line, April 26–27. Raleigh, NC: US. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Understanding-how-Twitter-is-used-to-spread-Letierce-Passant/c9d5d81311973b22f6b18a7f050ee976fef74dfb

Letierce, Passant, Breslin, and Decker aim to understand how Twitter is used for spreading academic knowledge, especially at conferences. To do so, they harvest and study tweets from three different conferences, as well as conduct interviews with colleagues who are active on social media. The findings tend in the direction of academic-only engagement with academic messaging. The authors’ use of Twitter as an indicator of emerging trends and popular topics of conversation could be relevant for those who study discipline formation or specific communities of practice.

† McGann, Jerome. 2001. Radiant Textuality: Literary Studies After the World Wide Web. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

McGann’s compilation of essays from 1993 to 2000 shows the development of his work in the digital edition, literary studies and interpretation, and digital scholarly work. He comes to regard critical gaming structures as environments that allow for new approaches to these areas of study. The essays move through McGann’s understanding of the potential of digital technologies as “thinking machines” that can go beyond the material limitations of the book. He describes scholarly work, editions, and translations as performative deformation that manipulates text and supplies a perceptual presentation for the reader. McGann explores the opportunity to leverage the digital ecosystem and enable interplay between multiple fields by using markup and databases to make “N-dimensional space” accessible. The final chapter reveals how the digital game Ivanhoe offers such an environment. In Ivanhoe, a digital role-playing game, a literary work is read and interpreted in a framework that combines primary and secondary texts, scholarship, and the players’ interpretations and commentaries in the same area, thus encouraging new forms of critical reflection. McGann calls this a “quantum field,” where textual objects and reading subjects operate within the same space, and which allows for algorithmic and rhetorical performative activity within rather than outside of the object of attention.

Φ McMillan Cottom, Tressie. 2015. “‘Who Do You Think You Are?’: When Marginality Meets Academic Microcelebrity.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology 7. https://doi.org/10.7264/N3319T5T (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Public Scholarship & Public Humanities)

Φ Morrison, Aimée. 2018. “Of, By, and For the Internet: New Media Studies and Public Scholarship.” The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities, edited by Jentery Sayers, 56–66. New York: Routledge. (Φ Public & Community Engagement > Public Scholarship & Public Humanities)

Neapetung, Myron, Lori Bradford, and Lalita Bharadwaj. 2019. “‘Spirit, Safety, and a Stand-off’: The Research-Creation Process and Its Roles in Relationality and Reconciliation among Researcher and Indigenous Co-Learners in Saskatchewan, Canada.” Engaged Scholars Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning 5 (2): 37–60.

Naepetung, Bradford, and Bharadwaj discuss a collaborative research creation initiative on the role and impact of water, undertaken by Saskatchewan-based academic researchers and Indigenous elders from Yellow Quill First Nation. The authors suggest that collaborations such as these must be entered into from a mutual standpoint of respect and reciprocity. Naepetung, Bradford, and Bharadwaj outline the project as well as the cultural challenges that had to be overcome in order for the initiative to meet the researchers’ and the community’s needs. For the authors, collaborative research creation is a worthwhile undertaking but one that must be approached cautiously and conscientiously.

* Ross, Claire. 2012. “Social Media for Digital Humanities and Community Engagement.” In Digital Humanities in Practice, edited by Claire Warwick, Melissa Terras, and Julianne Nyhan, 23–46. https://doi.org/10.29085/9781856049054.003

Ross explores the current uses of social media—which she defines as web-based tools that allow community participation, collaboration, and sharing—for digital humanities research. She also reviews the opportunities and challenges of utilizing social media in academia for community engagement, and suggests that the main applications of social media in digital humanities are crowdsourcing, enhancing a community of practice, and co-creating knowledge. The author points out that there is still much to learn about the impact these technologies have on teaching and researching, based on case studies of the University College London, including a project for transcribing Jeremy Bentham’s works by crowdsourcing; the use of Twitter during three digital humanities conferences; and the QRator Project, which allows researchers and visitors of a museum to view and share thoughts and interpretations of each object using QR codes. Ross remarks that to better understand the impact of social media in the academy, universities need to incorporate social media into their approaches to engage communities in scholarly debate and knowledge sharing.

Veletsianos, George. 2016. Media in Academia: Networked Scholars. New York: Routledge.

Veletsianos aims to nuance the conversation around academics’ participation on social media networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Contrary to the common narrative, the author urges his readers to consider the role of social media for academics as individuals. Social media is usually discussed in relation to increasing publication citation counts or one’s status as a public intellectual. Instead, Veletsianos contests that we should think of academic uptake of social media as a symptom of those involved with higher education; that is, academics want to connect and share aspects of themselves more broadly, so they turn to social media—social media does not cause them to connect and share more. Veletsianos repositions the human subject as an active rather than passive agent in the larger realms of social media and networked scholarship.