Comments on: Persistence http://piedmont2012.thatcamp.org/05/04/persistence/ The Humanities and Technology Camp Fri, 25 May 2012 19:32:16 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.12 By: George H. Williams http://piedmont2012.thatcamp.org/05/04/persistence/#comment-127 Fri, 04 May 2012 17:12:19 +0000 http://piedmont2012.thatcamp.org/?p=158#comment-127 I don’t agree with Smith’s assertion that people are as hesitant about publishing in digital-only venues as they are about creating other digital resources (in terms of what “counts” for such things as P&T). That might just be something that has changed over the 8 years since she published her essay. Though there may still be resistance from some quarters, many more people (imho) seem to recognize that peer-reviewed is peer-reviewed whether the venue is printed or digital.

I do agree that preservation is an important issue and will continue to be so, but I’m guessing that we’re a long way from P&T committees taking preservation plans (or the lack thereof) into consideration. My sense is that we’re only just now getting to the point where these committees are starting to recognize that digital work of any kind could be used as evidence of scholarly productivity. (Here I’ll admit that I’m only speaking from my own experience on my campus as I go through the process for promotion and tenure this year. My DH work has been recognized as valuable, thankfully, but concerns about preservation would require a kind of expertise that almost no one on my campus possesses.)

An observation: as people may already know, the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities now requires grant applicants to explain their plans for data preservation.

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