Valuing Digital Scholarship: Exploring the Changing Realities of Intellectual Work

Abstract

Because published research is a significant component of tenureandpromotion cases, even at institutions with an explicit teaching focus, faculty members often plan their pretenure scholarly activities on the basis of their understanding of how different types of scholarly work will be valued. At the same time, new technologies have influenced tenureandpromotion considerations, expanding not only available venues of publication but also definitions of scholarly activity and production. Because these new technologies include both new knowledge products and new approaches to knowledge construction, efforts to categorize the scholarly value of digital work have been difficult and complicated. While both faculty members using digital tools and committees charged with evaluating tenureandpromotion cases have tried to create appropriate categories for digital scholarship, their success remains partial. Both continue to raise important questions and concerns about how to approach digital work. The late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries have seen a range of discussions regarding the value of digital scholarship in tenureandpromotion cases—both in the humanities in general (Andersen; Borgman) and in En glish studies in particular ( BernardDonals; Carnochan; Lang, Walker, and Dorwick; Levine; Miall; Nahrwald; Janice Walker). Increasingly, these discussions have pointed to the need to account for