Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media
May 20, 2009
Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media
University of Maine’s criteria for New Media achievement serve as a model for faculty at other institutions.
Academia’s goal may be the free exchange of ideas, but up to now many universities have been wary–if not downright dismissive–of their professors using the Internet and other digital media to supercharge that exchange, especially in the arts and humanities.
Peer review committees are supposed to assess a researcher’s standing in the field, but to date most have ignored reputations established by blogging, publishing DVDs, or contributing to email lists.
In a signal that some universities are warming to digital scholarship, however, the winter 2009 issue of MIT’s Leonardo magazine–itself a traditional peer review journal, though known for experimenting with networked media–has published a feature on the changing criteria for excellence in the Internet age.
To make its point as concretely as possible, the feature includes the recently approved promotion and tenure guidelines of the University of Maine’s New Media Department, together with an argument for expanding recognition entitled “New Criteria for New Media.”
Rather than throw time-honored benchmarks for excellence out the window, “New Criteria for New Media” tries to extend them into the 21st century. To supplement the “closed” peer review process familiar from traditional journals, …. [University Of Maine's ] criteria recognize the value of the “open peer review” employed in recognition metrics such as ThoughtMesh and The Pool.
>>>The Pool < <<
[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/05/everyone-into-pool.html]
>>>ThoughMesh< <<
[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/05/thoughtmesh-innovative-scholarly.html]
As the name suggests, open peer review allows contributions from any community member rather than a group of experts, and all reviews are public; when combined with an appropriate recognition metric, the result is much faster evaluations than possible via the customary approach.
“New Criteria for New Media” also urges academic reviews to reward collaboration in new media research; valuable roles include conceptual architect, designer, engineer, or even matchmaker (e.g., introducing two other researchers whose collaboration results in a publication).
Because the University of Maine hopes other institutions will adopt these criteria and adapt them to their own needs, it is releasing them under a Creative Commons (CC-by) license. [snip]
The new criteria have already been sought after by individual tenure candidates and cited in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
[http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i38/38a01001.htm]
You can find them in Leonardo’s winter 2009 issue (vol. 42 no. 1)
[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/feature.php?id=927]
Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media
Abstract
This paper argues for redefining evaluation criteria for faculty working in new media research and makes specific recommendations for promotion and tenure committees in U.S. universities.
[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]
PDF (Subscribers)
[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]
PDF Plus (Subscibers)
[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]
See Also
[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/04/university-of-maine-promotion-and_20.html]
[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/04/university-of-maine-promotion-and.html]
See Also Also The ThoughMesh Version(s)
[http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/275.php]
University of Maine | Promotion and Tenure Guidelines || Promotion and Tenure Guidelines | New Criteria for New Media |
New Media Department, University of Maine
Promotion and Tenure Guidelines Addendum: Rationale for Redefined Criteria
New Criteria for New Media
Version 2.2, January 2007
Authors: Joline Blais, Jon Ippolito, and Owen Smith in collaboration with Steve Evans and Nate Stormer.
ABSTRACT: An argument for redefining promotion and tenure criteria for faculty in new media departments of today’s universities.
Introduction
Recognition and achievement in the field of new media must be measured by standards as high as but different from those in established artistic or scientific disciplines. As the reports from the American Council of Learned Societies[1], the Modern Language Association[2], and the University of Maine[3] recommend, promotion and tenure guidelines must be revised to encourage the creative and innovative use of technology if universities are to remain competitive in the 21st century.
The following points summarize some of the key areas in which new media research departs from traditional academic scholarship, with the aim of providing a rationale for specific criteria for promotion and tenure detailed elsewhere.
New form and content
The differences between traditional and new media excellence lie in both form and content. The hard-copy format of traditional review documentation, such as photocopies or slides, is insufficient for evaluating new media work; screenshots do little justice to electronic projects based on innovative interactive or participatory design. As the MLA puts it, “evaluative bodies should review faculty members’ work in the medium in which it was produced. For example, Web-based projects should be viewed online, not in printed form.”[4]
Further complicating the evaluation of new media achievements is the fact that they are often interdisciplinary, as reflected by the current University of Maine New Media faculty, whose backgrounds range from engineering to computer science to fine art to photojournalism to literature.
For example, while art professors typically divide clearly into critical (Art History) and creative (Studio Art) faculties, new media’s brief history often requires its practitioners to develop a critical context for their own creative work. This is why the majority of pre-eminent new media critics are also artists.[5] It is also why new media research spans numerous genres, from critical essays to political activism to community-building to software design.
Limitations of academic journals
These differences may require evaluators of new media artist-researchers to look beyond the usual standards applicable in other disciplines. As noted by a 2003 National Academies report:
Because the field of [Information Technology and Creative Practices] is young and dynamic, ITCP production is hard to evaluate. Traditional review panels…may be hampered by their members’ ties to single disciplines and the absence of a time-tested consensus about what constitutes good work in ITCP and why. [6]
Ironically, the National Academies study found that the highest benchmark for success in traditional academic departments, publication in peer-reviewed journals, is less relevant to success in new media–and empirically less an accurate measure of stature in the field–than more supple or timely forms of intellectual exposition:
The gold standard for academia–and the criterion most easily understood by parties outside a given subdiscipline–is the so-called archival journal (often published by scholarly or professional societies) that involves considerable editorial selection plus prepublication review and revision, which function as a screening system for quality. But the long lead time for such publications poses problems for subdisciplines in which timeliness–quickly getting an idea into the field–matters.[7]
Leonardo magazine (MIT Press) is currently the only print magazine universally recognized as a peer-reviewed journal about new media. There are currently a handful of networked peer-reviewed journals devoted to new media, such as Leonardo’s Electronic Almanac (Cambridge), Fibreculture (Sydney), and First Monday (Chicago).
Yet the field’s most prominent print publishers and research archivists[8] have acknowledged a 15-25 year lag and limited exposure that makes print publications far less relevant for new media research. Although promising new paradigms for distributed publication are on the horizon, at the time of writing these systems are only in the planning stage.[9] Finally, as the MLA warns, participation in electronic scholarship should not place extra demands on a researcher[10]; an accomplishment in new media research should substitute for a print article or monograph, not merely supplement them.
Alternative Recognition Measures
Given the accessibility and timeliness required for new media research, the following measures of recognition should be prioritized in the evaluation of new media research candidates:
1. Invited / edited publications
Invitations to publish in edited electronic journals or printed magazines and books should be recognized as the kind of peer influence that in other fields would be signaled by acceptance in peer-reviewed journals.
2. Live conferences
The 2003 National Academies study concludes that conferences on new media, both face-to-face and virtual, offer a more useful and in some cases more prestigious venue for exposition than academic journals:
[The sluggishness of journal publications] is offset somewhat by a flourishing array of conferences and other forums, in both virtual and real space, that provide a sense of community and an outlet as well as feedback[11]….The prestige associated with presentations at major conferences actually makes some of them more selective than journals.[12]
New forms of conference archiving–such as archived Webcasts–add value and exposure to the research presented at conferences.
3. Citations
Citations are a valuable and versatile measure of peer influence because they may come from or point to a variety of genres, from Web sites to databases to books in print. Examples include citations in:
a. Electronic archives and recognition networks, such as the publicly accessible databases maintained by the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal), the V2 organization (Rotterdam), the Database of Virtual Art (Berlin), and the Media Art Net database (Karlsruhe).
b. Books, printed journals, and newspapers. These are easier to find now, thanks to Google Scholar, Google Print, and Amazon’s “look inside the book” feature.
c. Syllabi and other pedagogical contexts. Google searches on .edu domains and citations of the author’s work in syllabi from outside universities can measure the academic currency of an individual researcher or her ideas. In the sciences, readings or projects cited on a syllabus are likely to be popular textbooks, but in an emerging field like new media, such recognition is a more valid marker of relevance.
4. Download / visitor counts
Downloads and other traffic-related statistics represent a measure of influence that has gained importance in the online community recently. As a 2005 open access study[13] concludes:
Whereas the significance of citation impact is well established, access of research literature via the Web provides a new metric for measuring the impact of articles – Web download impact.
Download impact is useful for at least two reasons:
(1) The portion of download variance that is correlated with citation counts provides an early-days estimate of probable citation impact that can begin to be tracked from the instant an article is made Open Access and that already attains its maximum predictive power after 6 months.
(2) The portion of download variance that is uncorrelated with citation counts provides a second, partly independent estimate of the impact of an article, sensitive to another form of research usage that is not reflected in citations (Kurtz 2004).
5. Impact in online discussions
Email discussion lists are the proving grounds of new media discourse. They vary greatly in tone and substance, but even the least moderated of such lists can subject their authors to rigorous–and at times withering–scrutiny.[14] Measures such as the number of list subscribers, geographic scope, the presence or absence of moderation, and the number of replies triggered by a given contribution can give a sense of the importance of each discussion list.[15]
6. Impact in the real world
While magazine columns and newspaper editorials may have little standing in traditional academic subjects, one of the strengths of new media are their relevance to a daily life that is increasingly inflected by the relentless proliferation of technologies. Even counting Google search returns on the author’s name or statistically improbable phrases can be a measure of real-world impact[16].
By privileging new media research with direct effect on local or global communities, the university can remain relevant in an age where much research takes place outside the ivory tower.
8. Net-native recognition metrics
Peer-evaluated online communities may invent their own measures of member evaluation, in which case they may be relevant to a researcher who participates in those communities. Examples of such self-policing communities include Slashdot, The Pool, Open Theory, and the Distributed Learning Project.
The MLA pins the responsibility for learning these new metrics on reviewers rather than the reviewed.[17] Given the mutability of such metrics, however, promotion and tenure candidates may be called upon to explain and give context to these metrics for their reviewers. Again, efforts to educate a scholar’s colleagues about new media should be considered part of that scholar’s research, not supplemental to it.
9. Reference letters
Letters of recommendation from outside referees are an important compensation for the irrelevance of traditional recognition venues. Nevertheless, it is insufficient merely to solicit such letters from professors tenured in new media at other universities, since so few exist.
More valuable is to use the measures outlined in this document to identify pre-eminent figures in new media, or to require new media promotion and tenure candidates to identify such figures and supply evidence that they qualify according to the criteria above.
[1] The ACLS recommends “policies for tenure and promotion that recognize and reward digital scholarship and scholarly communication; recognition should be given not only to scholarship that uses the humanities and social science cyberinfrastructure but also to scholarship that contributes to its design, construction, and growth….
We might expect younger colleagues to use new technologies with greater fluency and ease, but with tenure at stake, they will also be more risk-averse….
Senior scholars now have both the opportunity and the responsibility to take certain risks, first among which is to condone risk taking in their junior colleagues and their graduate students, making sure that such endeavors are appropriately rewarded.”
“Our Cultural Commonwealth,” report by the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 29 July 2006,
[http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm[, accessed January 2, 2007.
[2] “Departments and institutions should recognize the legitimacy of scholarship produced in new media, whether by individuals or in collaboration, and create procedures for evaluating these forms of scholarship.” December 2006 report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion,
[http://www.mla.org/tenure_promotion] accessed January 2, 2007.
[3] “The Commission encourages each department on campus, as well as the University as a whole, to examine promotion and tenure criteria to recognize and reward innovative uses of technology in teaching, research and service….the University needs to consider the criteria and standards used in the promotion and tenure process.
The Commission encourages each department and the University as a whole to consider whether faculty efforts in this area are recognized, valued, and/or encouraged.” November 2003 report of the University of Maine Commission on Information Technologies, accessed at
[http://www.umaine.edu/documents/CIT.pdf] on May 2, 2004.
[4] MLA Committee on Information Technology. “Guidelines for Evaluating Work with Digital Media in the Modern Languages.” 20 May 2000. ADE Bulletin 132 (2002): 94–95. 82, mirrored at
[http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital], accessed 2 January, 2007.
[5] A brief sampling of new media theorist-practitioners includes Simon Biggs (Cambridge University), Matthew Fuller (Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam), Mary Flanagan (Hunter), Alexander Galloway (NYU), Kenneth Goldberg (Berkeley), Eduardo Kac (Art Institute of Chicago), Natalie Jeremijenko (UCSD), Raphael Lozano-Hemmer (Karlstad University, Sweden), Lev Manovich (UCSD), Randall Packer (American University), Richard Rinehart (Berkeley), and Jeffrey Shaw (ZKM).
[6] National Research Council, Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003), pp. 8-9.
[7] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.
[8] These estimates are from MIT’s Roger Malina (Director of Leonardo magazine) and the Daniel Langlois Foundation’s Alain Depocas (Director of the Centre for Documentation + Research), and are mirrored at
[http://cordova.asap.um.maine.edu/wiki/index.php/Standards_of_Recognition]
[9] The Interarchive project is a possible model for distributed publication; see
[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive]
[10] “Change in favor of a more capacious conception of scholarship, which we strongly endorse, should not mean ever-wider demands on faculty members, most especially those coming up for tenure and promotion.” MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 21.
[11] National Research Council, op. cit., pp. 8-9.
[12] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.
[13] Tim Brody and Stevan Harnad, “Earlier Web Usage Statistics as Predictors of Later Citation Impact”,
[http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10647/], accessed 5 March 2005.
[14] This recent
[http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0504/msg00051.html]
rejoinder by Morlock Elloi on the
> If you have any past publications that might help me understand your point of view, I would gladly read them.
While I understand that in paidspeakerworld the weight of the argument is computed as (volume of publications) x (number of speeches), on nettime and elsewhere closer to reality arguments stand for themselves.
[15] Electronic and email texts also have a currency acknowledged by leading institutions in the field. As of December 21, 2005, one of the premiere bibliographic indices in new media, the Langlois Foundation’s CR+D database, included the following indexation for “Jon Ippolito”:
* Author of 10 documents
* Subject of 48 documents
* Participant to 21 events
* Organizer of 2 events
Of the 10 documents by the author indexed, 1 is from an email list and 2 are parts of Web sites. In the case of artist and critic Alexander Galloway, the relevance of his online texts is even more striking: although by 2005 he was the author of several journal articles and an important book from MIT Press, the two documents that represented his writing in the CR+D database were both from email lists.
[16] A statistically significant number of Google returns, eg > 30, may be a necessary but insufficient condition for confirming global impact.
[17] “In evaluating scholarship for tenure and promotion, committees and administrators must take responsibility for becoming fully aware both of the mechanisms of oversight and assessment that already govern the production of a great deal of digital scholarship and of the well-established role of new media in humanities research.
It is of course convenient when electronic scholarly editing and writing are clearly analogous to their print counterparts. But when new media make new forms of scholarship possible, those forms can be assessed with the same rigor used to judge scholarly quality in print media. We must have the flexibility to ensure that as new sources and instruments for knowing develop, the meaning of scholarship can expand and remain relevant to our changing times.” MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 46.
[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html]
Over 800 responders to stage largest emergency drill since Sept. 11 at World Trade Center site – WREG
May 17, 2009
Over 800 responders to stage largest emergency drill since Sept. 11 at World Trade Center site – WREG
NEW YORK (AP) — Over 800 emergency responders are staging the largest disaster drill since Sept. 11 at the World Trade Center site. New York City officials are staging a mock explosion on a PATH commuter rail train Sunday morning in the tunnel linking the site to northern New Jersey. Hundreds of
Abortion clouds Obama graduation address, honorary Notre Dame degree – Newsday
In this photo taken May 8, 2009 a truck adorned with anti-abortion protest signs is seen during a protest at Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. University of Notre Dame students who plan to protest the school’s awarding of an honorary degree to President Barack Obama on campus during commencement Sunday
Hackers Break into University Health Records – PC World
May 9, 2009
Hackers Break into University Health Records – PC World
The University of California at Berkeley Friday disclosed that hackers broke into restricted computer databases in the campus health-services center, as the university began notifying current and former Berkeley students their personal information may have been taken. The attackers may have taken
Underlying diseases worsen swine flu prognosis – Food Consumer
Saturday May 9, 2009 (foodconsumer.org) — As cases of swine flu exceed 2500, researchers are increasing their understanding of underlying factors that lead to death and hospitalization. The New York Times reports that the World Health Organization is now aware of more than 2,500 laboratory
Jordan: Official thanks pope for expressing regret – Lexington Herald-Leader
AMMAN, Jordan — The top religious adviser to Jordan’s king thanked Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday for his expression of regret after a 2006 speech that many Muslims deemed insulting to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. Prince Ghazi bin Mohammed spoke after giving Benedict a tour of the biggest mosque in
Jacob Zuma sworn in as president of South Africa; tens of thousands attend inauguration – Minneapolis Star Tribune
Crowded hospitals, do-it-yourself doctoring: Flu exposes Mexico’s health care system Jordan: Official thanks pope for expressing regret Pakistan: Up to 55 Taliban killed in northwest Pakistan army says as many as 55 Taliban militants killed in offensive in northwestern valley US-Afghan probe
Clock Ticking for Kiefer Sutherland After Alleged Jack Bauer-esque … – ABC News
May 7, 2009
Clock Ticking for Kiefer Sutherland After Alleged Jack Bauer-esque … – ABC News Clock Ticking for Kiefer Sutherland After Alleged Jack Bauer-esque …
National Post
ABC News - Sheila Marikar
By SHEILA MARIKAR The "24" star appeared to take the law into his own hands (or head) early Tuesday morning when he allegedly head-butted fashion designer Jack McCollough outside a New York City nightclub.
Kiefer's Surrender — It Ain't That Easy
'24' star Kiefer Sutherland to turn himself in, face assault …
As Kindle DX Arrives, Amazon Snags Design Patent – ChannelWeb As Kindle DX Arrives, Amazon Snags Design Patent
guardian.co.uk
ChannelWeb
The arrival of Amazon's Kindle DX, the large-screen version of its Kindle e-reader, has been a headline grabber all week, from analysis of its design and larger form factor to its pilot programs for newspapers, magazines and textbooks, …
Amazon's Kindle DX Poses Profitability Challenge To Publishers
Will Students Take to Amazon`s Campus-Bound Kindle DX?
Santa Barbara fire burns homes, spurs evacuations – USA Today
By Gene Blevins, Reuters SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – High winds and scorching temperatures pushed a mountain wildfire into this seaside resort community destroying at least a dozen homes and forcing thousands of people to flee.
Video: Santa Barbara Wildfires Continue To Burn
Fire Destroys 20 Houses in California
Undergrads get published
April 30, 2009
Undergrads get published
The best and the brightest writers get the opportunity to shine in Lucerna, the annual publication of the Honors Program.
Open to undergraduates from all disciplines across campus, Lucerna accepts previously unpublished works written during the applicant’s college career.
UNU-IAS is now accepting applications for its three fellowship programmes
UNU-IAS is now accepting applications for its three fellowship programmes, Japan
PhD & Postdoctoral Fellowships – Sustainable Development
The United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) is now accepting applications for its three fellowship programmes:
UNU-IAS PhD Fellowships, UNU-IAS Postdoctoral Fellowships, and JSPS-UNU Postdoctoral Fellowships. The closing date for applications is 31 March 2009.
UNU-IAS is a multi-thematic, interdisciplinary, research and training centre located in Yokohama, Japan. The Institute’s fellowship programmes provide young scientists, policy makers, and developing country scholars with the opportunity to expand their intellectual vision beyond a single scientific field.
UNU-IAS PhD and Postdoctoral Fellowships are offered for a period of 10 months beginning in September 2009. JSPS-UNU Postdoctoral Fellowships are offered for 12-24 months beginning in September 2009.
Postdoctoral candidates must have completed a PhD degree, and PhD candidates must be at the advanced stage of their doctoral dissertation.
Please click on full details link for more information.
Source: http://www.ias.unu.edu/sub_page.aspx?catID=6&ddlID=756
University of Maine | Promotion and Tenure Guidelines || Promotion and Tenure Guidelines | New Criteria for New Media |
April 30, 2009
University of Maine | Promotion and Tenure Guidelines || Promotion and Tenure Guidelines | New Criteria for New Media |
New Media Department, University of Maine
Promotion and Tenure Guidelines Addendum: Rationale for Redefined Criteria
New Criteria for New Media
Version 2.2, January 2007
Authors: Joline Blais, Jon Ippolito, and Owen Smith in collaboration with Steve Evans and Nate Stormer.
ABSTRACT: An argument for redefining promotion and tenure criteria for faculty in new media departments of today’s universities.
Introduction
Recognition and achievement in the field of new media must be measured by standards as high as but different from those in established artistic or scientific disciplines. As the reports from the American Council of Learned Societies[1], the Modern Language Association[2], and the University of Maine[3] recommend, promotion and tenure guidelines must be revised to encourage the creative and innovative use of technology if universities are to remain competitive in the 21st century.
The following points summarize some of the key areas in which new media research departs from traditional academic scholarship, with the aim of providing a rationale for specific criteria for promotion and tenure detailed elsewhere.
New form and content
The differences between traditional and new media excellence lie in both form and content. The hard-copy format of traditional review documentation, such as photocopies or slides, is insufficient for evaluating new media work; screenshots do little justice to electronic projects based on innovative interactive or participatory design. As the MLA puts it, “evaluative bodies should review faculty members’ work in the medium in which it was produced. For example, Web-based projects should be viewed online, not in printed form.”[4]
Further complicating the evaluation of new media achievements is the fact that they are often interdisciplinary, as reflected by the current University of Maine New Media faculty, whose backgrounds range from engineering to computer science to fine art to photojournalism to literature.
For example, while art professors typically divide clearly into critical (Art History) and creative (Studio Art) faculties, new media’s brief history often requires its practitioners to develop a critical context for their own creative work. This is why the majority of pre-eminent new media critics are also artists.[5] It is also why new media research spans numerous genres, from critical essays to political activism to community-building to software design.
Limitations of academic journals
These differences may require evaluators of new media artist-researchers to look beyond the usual standards applicable in other disciplines. As noted by a 2003 National Academies report:
Because the field of [Information Technology and Creative Practices] is young and dynamic, ITCP production is hard to evaluate. Traditional review panels…may be hampered by their members’ ties to single disciplines and the absence of a time-tested consensus about what constitutes good work in ITCP and why. [6]
Ironically, the National Academies study found that the highest benchmark for success in traditional academic departments, publication in peer-reviewed journals, is less relevant to success in new media–and empirically less an accurate measure of stature in the field–than more supple or timely forms of intellectual exposition:
The gold standard for academia–and the criterion most easily understood by parties outside a given subdiscipline–is the so-called archival journal (often published by scholarly or professional societies) that involves considerable editorial selection plus prepublication review and revision, which function as a screening system for quality. But the long lead time for such publications poses problems for subdisciplines in which timeliness–quickly getting an idea into the field–matters.[7]
Leonardo magazine (MIT Press) is currently the only print magazine universally recognized as a peer-reviewed journal about new media. There are currently a handful of networked peer-reviewed journals devoted to new media, such as Leonardo’s Electronic Almanac (Cambridge), Fibreculture (Sydney), and First Monday (Chicago).
Yet the field’s most prominent print publishers and research archivists[8] have acknowledged a 15-25 year lag and limited exposure that makes print publications far less relevant for new media research. Although promising new paradigms for distributed publication are on the horizon, at the time of writing these systems are only in the planning stage.[9] Finally, as the MLA warns, participation in electronic scholarship should not place extra demands on a researcher[10]; an accomplishment in new media research should substitute for a print article or monograph, not merely supplement them.
Alternative Recognition Measures
Given the accessibility and timeliness required for new media research, the following measures of recognition should be prioritized in the evaluation of new media research candidates:
1. Invited / edited publications
Invitations to publish in edited electronic journals or printed magazines and books should be recognized as the kind of peer influence that in other fields would be signaled by acceptance in peer-reviewed journals.
2. Live conferences
The 2003 National Academies study concludes that conferences on new media, both face-to-face and virtual, offer a more useful and in some cases more prestigious venue for exposition than academic journals:
[The sluggishness of journal publications] is offset somewhat by a flourishing array of conferences and other forums, in both virtual and real space, that provide a sense of community and an outlet as well as feedback[11]….The prestige associated with presentations at major conferences actually makes some of them more selective than journals.[12]
New forms of conference archiving–such as archived Webcasts–add value and exposure to the research presented at conferences.
3. Citations
Citations are a valuable and versatile measure of peer influence because they may come from or point to a variety of genres, from Web sites to databases to books in print. Examples include citations in:
a. Electronic archives and recognition networks, such as the publicly accessible databases maintained by the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal), the V2 organization (Rotterdam), the Database of Virtual Art (Berlin), and the Media Art Net database (Karlsruhe).
b. Books, printed journals, and newspapers. These are easier to find now, thanks to Google Scholar, Google Print, and Amazon’s “look inside the book” feature.
c. Syllabi and other pedagogical contexts. Google searches on .edu domains and citations of the author’s work in syllabi from outside universities can measure the academic currency of an individual researcher or her ideas. In the sciences, readings or projects cited on a syllabus are likely to be popular textbooks, but in an emerging field like new media, such recognition is a more valid marker of relevance.
4. Download / visitor counts
Downloads and other traffic-related statistics represent a measure of influence that has gained importance in the online community recently. As a 2005 open access study[13] concludes:
Whereas the significance of citation impact is well established, access of research literature via the Web provides a new metric for measuring the impact of articles – Web download impact.
Download impact is useful for at least two reasons:
(1) The portion of download variance that is correlated with citation counts provides an early-days estimate of probable citation impact that can begin to be tracked from the instant an article is made Open Access and that already attains its maximum predictive power after 6 months.
(2) The portion of download variance that is uncorrelated with citation counts provides a second, partly independent estimate of the impact of an article, sensitive to another form of research usage that is not reflected in citations (Kurtz 2004).
5. Impact in online discussions
Email discussion lists are the proving grounds of new media discourse. They vary greatly in tone and substance, but even the least moderated of such lists can subject their authors to rigorous–and at times withering–scrutiny.[14] Measures such as the number of list subscribers, geographic scope, the presence or absence of moderation, and the number of replies triggered by a given contribution can give a sense of the importance of each discussion list.[15]
6. Impact in the real world
While magazine columns and newspaper editorials may have little standing in traditional academic subjects, one of the strengths of new media are their relevance to a daily life that is increasingly inflected by the relentless proliferation of technologies. Even counting Google search returns on the author’s name or statistically improbable phrases can be a measure of real-world impact[16].
By privileging new media research with direct effect on local or global communities, the university can remain relevant in an age where much research takes place outside the ivory tower.
8. Net-native recognition metrics
Peer-evaluated online communities may invent their own measures of member evaluation, in which case they may be relevant to a researcher who participates in those communities. Examples of such self-policing communities include Slashdot, The Pool, Open Theory, and the Distributed Learning Project.
The MLA pins the responsibility for learning these new metrics on reviewers rather than the reviewed.[17] Given the mutability of such metrics, however, promotion and tenure candidates may be called upon to explain and give context to these metrics for their reviewers. Again, efforts to educate a scholar’s colleagues about new media should be considered part of that scholar’s research, not supplemental to it.
9. Reference letters
Letters of recommendation from outside referees are an important compensation for the irrelevance of traditional recognition venues. Nevertheless, it is insufficient merely to solicit such letters from professors tenured in new media at other universities, since so few exist.
More valuable is to use the measures outlined in this document to identify pre-eminent figures in new media, or to require new media promotion and tenure candidates to identify such figures and supply evidence that they qualify according to the criteria above.
[1] The ACLS recommends “policies for tenure and promotion that recognize and reward digital scholarship and scholarly communication; recognition should be given not only to scholarship that uses the humanities and social science cyberinfrastructure but also to scholarship that contributes to its design, construction, and growth….
We might expect younger colleagues to use new technologies with greater fluency and ease, but with tenure at stake, they will also be more risk-averse….
Senior scholars now have both the opportunity and the responsibility to take certain risks, first among which is to condone risk taking in their junior colleagues and their graduate students, making sure that such endeavors are appropriately rewarded.”
“Our Cultural Commonwealth,” report by the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 29 July 2006,
[http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm[, accessed January 2, 2007.
[2] “Departments and institutions should recognize the legitimacy of scholarship produced in new media, whether by individuals or in collaboration, and create procedures for evaluating these forms of scholarship.” December 2006 report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion,
[http://www.mla.org/tenure_promotion] accessed January 2, 2007.
[3] “The Commission encourages each department on campus, as well as the University as a whole, to examine promotion and tenure criteria to recognize and reward innovative uses of technology in teaching, research and service….the University needs to consider the criteria and standards used in the promotion and tenure process.
The Commission encourages each department and the University as a whole to consider whether faculty efforts in this area are recognized, valued, and/or encouraged.” November 2003 report of the University of Maine Commission on Information Technologies, accessed at
[http://www.umaine.edu/documents/CIT.pdf] on May 2, 2004.
[4] MLA Committee on Information Technology. “Guidelines for Evaluating Work with Digital Media in the Modern Languages.” 20 May 2000. ADE Bulletin 132 (2002): 94–95. 82, mirrored at
[http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital], accessed 2 January, 2007.
[5] A brief sampling of new media theorist-practitioners includes Simon Biggs (Cambridge University), Matthew Fuller (Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam), Mary Flanagan (Hunter), Alexander Galloway (NYU), Kenneth Goldberg (Berkeley), Eduardo Kac (Art Institute of Chicago), Natalie Jeremijenko (UCSD), Raphael Lozano-Hemmer (Karlstad University, Sweden), Lev Manovich (UCSD), Randall Packer (American University), Richard Rinehart (Berkeley), and Jeffrey Shaw (ZKM).
[6] National Research Council, Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003), pp. 8-9.
[7] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.
[8] These estimates are from MIT’s Roger Malina (Director of Leonardo magazine) and the Daniel Langlois Foundation’s Alain Depocas (Director of the Centre for Documentation + Research), and are mirrored at
[http://cordova.asap.um.maine.edu/wiki/index.php/Standards_of_Recognition]
[9] The Interarchive project is a possible model for distributed publication; see
[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive]
[10] “Change in favor of a more capacious conception of scholarship, which we strongly endorse, should not mean ever-wider demands on faculty members, most especially those coming up for tenure and promotion.” MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 21.
[11] National Research Council, op. cit., pp. 8-9.
[12] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.
[13] Tim Brody and Stevan Harnad, “Earlier Web Usage Statistics as Predictors of Later Citation Impact”,
[http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10647/], accessed 5 March 2005.
[14] This recent
[http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0504/msg00051.html]
rejoinder by Morlock Elloi on the
> If you have any past publications that might help me understand your point of view, I would gladly read them.
While I understand that in paidspeakerworld the weight of the argument is computed as (volume of publications) x (number of speeches), on nettime and elsewhere closer to reality arguments stand for themselves.
[15] Electronic and email texts also have a currency acknowledged by leading institutions in the field. As of December 21, 2005, one of the premiere bibliographic indices in new media, the Langlois Foundation’s CR+D database, included the following indexation for “Jon Ippolito”:
* Author of 10 documents
* Subject of 48 documents
* Participant to 21 events
* Organizer of 2 events
Of the 10 documents by the author indexed, 1 is from an email list and 2 are parts of Web sites. In the case of artist and critic Alexander Galloway, the relevance of his online texts is even more striking: although by 2005 he was the author of several journal articles and an important book from MIT Press, the two documents that represented his writing in the CR+D database were both from email lists.
[16] A statistically significant number of Google returns, eg > 30, may be a necessary but insufficient condition for confirming global impact.
[17] “In evaluating scholarship for tenure and promotion, committees and administrators must take responsibility for becoming fully aware both of the mechanisms of oversight and assessment that already govern the production of a great deal of digital scholarship and of the well-established role of new media in humanities research.
It is of course convenient when electronic scholarly editing and writing are clearly analogous to their print counterparts. But when new media make new forms of scholarship possible, those forms can be assessed with the same rigor used to judge scholarly quality in print media. We must have the flexibility to ensure that as new sources and instruments for knowing develop, the meaning of scholarship can expand and remain relevant to our changing times.” MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 46.
[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html]
Over easy, with bacon
April 29, 2009
Over easy, with bacon
It is difficult to sign off after three years working at this newspaper, so I won’t.
I’ll just say it was unfortunate I also had to take classes in my very limited spare time.
Theoretically, we’re supposed to be students first and journalists second, but it becomes difficult when you get involved in the intricate political shenanigans ever-present on this campus.
Beasiswa S1 dalam negeri: The GE Foundation Scholar-Leaders Program 2009
THE GE FOUNDATION SCHOLAR – LEADERS PROGRAM 2009
Beasiswa GE Foundation Scholar-Leaders Program ditawarkan kepada para mahasiswa S1 di Indonesia, yang diberikan mulai semester tiga sampai dengan semester delapan.
PERSYARATAN:
1. Mahasiswa S1 angkatan 2007/2008 dari ITB, ITS, UGM, UI, UNAIR, UNDIP, UNIBRAW dan UNPAD; di salah satu jurusan berikut: Ekonomi (Akuntansi, Studi Pembangunan,
Manajemen), MIPA (Fisika, Kimia, Matematika), Ilmu Komputer, Ilmu Lingkungan, Teknik (Teknik Elektro, Teknik Fisika, Teknik Industri, Teknik Kimia, Teknik Komputer, Teknik Lingkungan, atau Teknik Mesin).
2. IP semester I, II, dan III minimal 3.0 (skala 0-4).
3. Aktif dalam organisasi kemahasiswaan atau kegiatan sosial lainnya.
4. Memiliki kemampuan bahasa Inggris yang baik.
5. Berasal dari keluarga tidak mampu.
6. Tidak sedang menerima beasiswa dari institusi/sponsor lain.
Formulir pendaftaran dapat diambil/difotokopi di bagian Kemahasiswaan, di masing-masing Jurusan atau HIMA, atau diakses dari website IIEF. Formulir pendaftaran yang telah diisi harus dilengkapi dengan transkrip nilai semester 1 dan 2 (dilegalisir); 2 surat rekomendasi (dari dosen wali dan dosen lainnya); 2 surat keterangan tidak mampu (dari kelurahan dan pihak universitas); surat pernyataan tidak sedang menerima beasiswa lain dan tidak akan menerima beasiswa lain apabila ditetapkan sebagai penerima beasiswa GE Foundation Scholar-Leaders Program; serta salinan sertifikat dan dokumen pendukung lainnya (bila ada).
Seluruh dokumen harus dikirim ke IIEF paling lambat pada:
14 Maret 2009 (cap pos)
dengan alamat
Beasiswa GE Foundation Scholar-Leaders Program – IIEF
Menara Imperium Lt. 28 Suite B
Jl. H. R. Rasuna Said, Jakarta 12980
Tel.No.: 021-8317330, Fax.No.: 021-8317331;
E-mail: scholarship@iief.or.id, Website: www.iief.or.id
Hanya dokumen pendaftaran yang lengkap dan memenuhi syarat yang disertakan dalam proses seleksi.
Nationwide search on for Ga. professor suspected in triple shooting; no sign of him, red Jeep – Minneapolis Star Tribune
April 26, 2009
Nationwide search on for Ga. professor suspected in triple shooting; no sign of him, red Jeep – Minneapolis Star Tribune
ATHENS, Ga. – Authorities from Georgia to Texas had little to go on Sunday as they searched for a University of Georgia professor suspected of shooting his ex-wife and two other men to death outside a theater near campus. Neighbors watched Saturday as SWAT team members, guns drawn, swarmed their
Texas officials ‘aggressively’ look for swine flu – Houston Chronicle
SAN ANTONIO — Texas health officials on Sunday were asking hospitals and doctors to take samples from flu patients so they could aggressively survey for a new strain of swine flu that has killed dozens of people in Mexico and sparked fears of a global pandemic. Only two confirmed cases and one
IMF head says it will sell bonds to raise funds – San Francisco Gate
April 26, 2009
IMF head says it will sell bonds to raise funds – San Francisco Gate
Sunday, April 26, 2009 Emerging economies such as China, Brazil and India pushed for the move as an alternative to providing longer-term loans to the IMF. Those countries want a greater voice in the institution before providing additional resources. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said
Mexico fights swine flu with ‘pandemic potential’ – Rapid City Journal
MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s president assumed new powers Saturday to isolate people infected with a deadly swine flu strain as authorities struggled to contain an outbreak that world health officials warned could become a global epidemic. New cases of swine flu were confirmed in Kansas and California and
Professor sought in slaying of 3 in Georgia – Seattle Times
George Zinkhan is sought in shooting deaths. ATHENS, Ga. — Authorities were on a nationwide manhunt for a University of Georgia professor in the shooting deaths of three people Saturday at a community theater near campus. Athens-Clarke County Police Capt. Clarence Holeman said the suspected
Stafford picked first by Lions, Jets get Sanchez – The State
NEW YORK — Matthew Stafford’s mission is daunting: Lead the Detroit Lions back from the only 0-16 season in NFL history. Mark Sanchez has nearly as big a challenge: He’ll compete to replace Brett Favre. The Lions found the centerpiece for one of the biggest rebuilding jobs in league history, taking
Univ. of Georgia professor a suspect in shooting – Charleston Daily Mail
April 25, 2009
Univ. of Georgia professor a suspect in shooting – Charleston Daily Mail
ATHENS, Ga. (AP) – Police are looking for a University of Georgia professor who is a suspect in a shooting off campus. The school’s Web site says police are looking for George Zinkhan. He is a marketing professor at the school in Athens, which is about 70 miles east of Atlanta. Athens-Clarke
Health Officials Say Outbreak at New York City School Likely Swine Flu – FOX News
NEW YORK — New York City health officials say eight of nine samples taken from students sickened at a Queens high school tested positive for influenza, likely swine flu, adding to concerns of a growing outbreak that has killed dozens in Mexico. Officials cautioned the public that there is no
