Andrew Quintman and Kurtis R. Schaeffer, The Life of the Buddha digital project

The American Academy of Religion recently put together a Publishing Task Force, of which I am part. Our task has been to think about the AAR’s role in promoting scholarship and publishing among its membership. They recognize the changing terrain of academic scholarship so a sub-group of the task force focused on producing draft of guidelines for evaluating digital scholarship, which in our minds fell within the discourse of “digital humanities.” We realize this is a tricky phrase that is difficult to define but that wasn’t our goal. The document is intended to give institutional credence to folks who are doing excellent work that doesn’t look like a book or article, which can then be recognized by their institutions for tenure and promotion. Unfortunately, many scholars judge their (often junior) peers by a criteria that is limited to scholarship that is legible in traditional forms of scholarly production. We hope this will aid departments in rethinking their tenure and promotion processes.

Anyway, it was great working with Timothy Beal, Christopher Cantwell, Ted Vial, and Jeri E. Wieringa. They are a wonderful group of smart folks!

The draft for the Guidelines for Evaluating Digital Scholarship are online now and open for recommendations, comments, and suggestions until August 31, 2017.

Please take a look and let us know what you think. Available here

Image from Andrew Quintman and Kurtis R. Schaeffer, The Life of the Buddha digital project (check it out here).