This is a subject of high relevance to our departments/disciplines as we review our guidelines/criteria for promotion and tenure.

“How Scholars Hack the World of Academic Publishing Now,” The Atlantic, Aug. 28, 2013
http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/how-scholars-hack-the-world-of-academic-publishing-now/279119/

Sam Wineburg, “Choosing Real-World Impact Over Impact Factor,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Aug. 26, 2013. http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/08/26/choosing-real-world-impact-over-impact-factor/

I love this quote in the comments field of the Chronicle/Wineburg article:

“This whole business is kept in check by an interlocking directorate of journals, grant-making agencies, promotion and tenure criteria, and yes, annual reviews.  Ideas on how to break this mould?”

A timely post on Nick Sacco’s blog, “Exploring the Past,” about how to use social media to promote your scholarship and build a digital portfolio.

Putting Yourself Out There: Tips and Tricks
http://pastexplore.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/putting-yourself-out-there-tips-and-tricks/

http://wunc.org/post/unc-develops-online-tool-mapping-history

http://dhpress.org/

DH Press (formerly diPH) is an extensible and easy-to-use platform for the creation of digital humanities projects. Built on the open-source WordPress content management system (CMS), DH Press offers a user-friendly web interface over a MySQL database. As such, data can be migrated in and out of the system with relative ease. While WordPress began as a blog platform (one which is used for nearly 16% of all websites today), it has since become a robust content management system for handling a range of data. The strength of WordPress is its flexibility. Plugin extensions allow users to modify the core to add functionality to the system. With close to 21,000 plugins to date, nearly anything is possible in WordPress. Creating and modifying plugins is far easier and more cost-effective than having to rewrite the code for custom-built software, thereby producing a more flexible and responsive system for digital humanities projects.

[Here’s another potential platform for our e-Posters for Arts & Humanities initiative. SF]

http://scalar.usc.edu/scalar/

Introducing Scalar. Born-digital, open source, media-rich scholarly publishing that’s as easy as blogging.

Scalar is a free, open source authoring and publishing platform that’s designed to make it easy for authors to write long-form, born-digital scholarship online. Scalar enables users to assemble media from multiple sources and juxtapose them with their own writing in a variety of ways, with minimal technical expertise required.

More fundamentally, Scalar is a semantic web authoring tool that brings a considered balance between standardization and structural flexibility to all kinds of material. It includes a built-in reading interface as well as an API that enables Scalar content to be used to drive custom-designed applications. If you’re dealing with small to moderate amounts of structured content and need a lightweight platform that encourages improvisation with your data model, Scalar may be the right solution for you.

Scalar also gives authors tools to structure essay- and book-length works in ways that take advantage of the unique capabilities of digital writing, including nested, recursive, and non-linear formats. The platform also supports collaborative authoring and reader commentary. The ANVC’s partner presses and archives are now beginning to implement Scalar into their research and publishing workflows, and several projects leveraging the platform have been published already.

Scalar is a project of the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture (ANVC) in association with Vectors, IML, and CTS and with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A Virtual Cotton Club Rises, With an Open-Source Engine

Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus, posted 8/15

Bryan Carter, an assistant professor of Africana studies, has been using the virtual world to teach students about the Harlem Renaissance since 2005. But as technology has advanced, Mr. Carter has been looking to evolve his virtual city as well. Now the virtual-life company Utherverse is building a new digital replica of Harlem during the 1920s, based on a street grid Mr. Carter has provided. The company is relying on the Unity engine, a cross-platform game engine that employs open graphics standards….

The project is among Utherverse’s first steps into the academic realm. The company has previously focused on the development of a virtual social world for adults, although it also offers services like UtherConvention, which hosts virtual conventions for businesses. Some classes have already been conducted in Utherverse’s virtual world, including foreign-language courses and classes on decorating and clothing design, said Anna Lee, Utherverse’s chief business-development officer.

http://theappendix.net/

The Appendix is a quarterly journal of experimental and narrative history; though at times outlandish, everything in its pages is as true as the sources allow. The Appendix solicits articles from historians, writers, and artists committed to good storytelling, with an eye for the strange and a suspicion of both jargon and traditional narratives. A creature of the web, its format takes advantage of the flexibility of hypertext and modern web presentation techniques to experiment with and explore the process and method of writing history.

Applications are now open for a 2-day, NEH-funded symposium and summit, Speaking in Code,  to be held at U.Va.’s Scholars’ Lab this November 4th and 5th. Speaking in Code participants will be selected on the basis of their demonstrated experience in digital humanities software development, their interest in advancing solutions to the problems raised by the summit, and the disciplinary and cultural diversity they bring to the conversation. See this SLab blog post by Bethany Nowviskie  for details.

Application deadline: September 12th.