Knowledge Mobilization in the Humanities/Definitions and Foundations

Arbuckle, Alyssa, Nina Belojevic, Matthew Hiebert, Ray Siemens, Shaun Wong, Derek Siemens, Alex Christie, Jon Saklofske, Jentery Sayers, and the INKE and ETCL Research Groups. 2014. “Social Knowledge Creation: Three Annotated Bibliographies.” https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/7566

Arbuckle, Belojevic, Hiebert, Siemens, with Wong, Siemens, Christie, Saklofske, Sayers, and the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) and Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) research groups provide three annotated bibliographies anchored in social knowledge creation. They claim that their project transiently represents interrelational research areas and that it emphasizes “(re)shaping processes that produce knowledge” (n.p). The authors address the work’s intent, highlighting the importance of collaboration and open source. They discuss the principles to which this bibliography adheres, addressing topics such as the book, print, remediation of culture, and interaction and collaboration. In addition, they explore the importance of digital tools and gamification to the practice of social knowledge creation. The three main parts of this document are social knowledge creation and conveyance, game-design models for digital social knowledge creation, and social knowledge creation tools. Each of these sections begins with an introduction that presents an overview of the section’s content and ends with a complete alphabetical list of selections.

Arbuckle, Alyssa, Ray Siemens, Jon Bath, Constance Crompton, Laura Estill, Tanja Niemann, Jon Saklofske, and Lynne Siemens. 2022. “An Open Social Scholarship Path for the Humanities.” Journal of Electronic Publishing. https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/jep/article/id/1973/

Arbuckle, Alyssa, Aaron Mauro, and Daniel Powell. n.d. “Introduction: ‘Tracing the Movement of Ideas.’” In Social Knowledge Creation in the Humanities: An Open Anthology. Accessed July 16, 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20210624002546/https://ntmrs-skc.itercommunity.org/index.html%3Fp=108.html

Arbuckle, Alyssa. 2021. “Opening up Scholarship in the Humanities: Digital Publishing, Knowledge Translation, and Public Engagement.” PhD Dissertation, Victoria, BC: University of Victoria. https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/bitstream/handle/1828/13020/Arbuckle_Alyssa_PhD_2021.pdf?sequence=1.

Arbuckle argues that scholarship–and humanities scholarship specifically–should evolve to be more open, inclusive, and public. With the concept of open social scholarship as a framework, Arbuckle considers the Open Access movement as the first step in opening up humanities scholarship, pointing out that the movement has not yet adequately addressed knowledge equity issues. She looks to public humanities as an example of engaged humanities scholarship in practice, exploring the economic, policy, technological, and cultural factors at play. Turning to social knowledge creation, Arbuckle investigates the possibilities of social media and other digital communication technologies for enabling a more open and social mode of humanities scholarship. She also explores how successful public engagement strategies from the sciences, including knowledge brokering, could be applied in the humanities, and argues that iteration is a useful strategy for communicating humanities research. Arbuckle’s final chapter profiling scholars engaged in what she calls “pop humanities” work includes an iterative addendum that models how such repetition and variation works in practice. She concludes by examining how open social scholarship fits within the larger scholarly communication tradition and how working more socially and in the open could move humanities scholarship forward.

Arbuckle, Alyssa, Ray Siemens, and The INKE Partnership. 2022. “Digital Humanities Futures, Open Social Scholarship, and Engaged Publics.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities, edited by James O’Sullivan. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Association of Canadian Community Colleges. (2011). Productivity through innovation: Applied research at Canadian colleges and institutes. Ottawa, ON: ACCC. https://canadacommons.ca/artifacts/1193908/productivity-through-innovation/1747032/.

Banks, Sarah and Andrea Armstrong, with Mark Booth, Greg Brown, Kathleen Carter, Maurice Clarkson, Lynne Corner, Audley Genus, Rose Gilroy, Tom Henfrey, Kate Hudson, Anna Jenner, Robert Moss, Dermot Roddy, and Andrew Russell. 2014. “Using Co-Inquiry to Study Co-Inquiry: Community-University Perspectives on Research.” JCES: Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship 7 (1), https://jces.ua.edu/articles/10.54656/GRXT3521.

Sarah Banks et al. explore co-inquiry as a research process through co-inquiry: a group of community partners, academics, and researchers collaborated to explore trends and patterns across four different case studies of co-inquiry projects. The group’s work was modelled after the concept of cooperative experiential inquiry and drew on the methodologies of community development work, critical community practice, and critical pedagogy. Through dialogue between community members and academics, the group identified several themes. Community members raised the issue of academic jargon repeatedly. Banks et al. argue that the issue of academic language is about more than just terminology: it has to do with power differentials, academic culture, and ways of knowing. For academics, the complications of occupying more than one role in a research project was challenging. Additionally, the group identified six benefits of engaging in co-inquiry action research which include: (1) broadening of theoretical knowledge, (2) developing practical knowledge, (3) deepening sensitivity, (4) stimulating reflexivity, (5) developing self-confidence, and (6) leading to further action. Ultimately, the group was able to address these challenges and create a space of collaborative reflexivity where co-inquirers were able to reflect on themselves, the influence of their position on the group, and importantly, the structure and dynamics of the group itself. Banks et al. conclude by advocating for the integration of co-inquiry action research groups within larger research projects rather than simply as advisory groups.

Berkowitz, Carin, and Matthew Gibson. 2022. “Reframing the Public Humanities: The Tensions, Challenges & Potentials of a More Expansive Endeavor.” Daedalus. https://www.amacad.org/publication/reframing-public-humanities-tensions-challenges-potentials-more-expansive-endeavor.

Borgman, Christine. 2007. Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Borgman provides a thorough overview of the digital scholarship environment that accounts for trends and issues in policies, institutions, disciplines, and technologies. Her goal is to characterize the state of digital scholarship and to frame it within social, historical, and technological contexts. Borgman situates digital scholarship (or e-Research, as she often refers to it) within a longer trajectory of efforts to make scholarly communication more efficient, useful, and expansive. She also suggests that a bottom-up approach to digital scholarship will ultimately not be successful, because of low incentives and high barriers. Contrary to grassroots advocates, Borgman believes that institutions and policymakers, rather than individual faculty members or librarians, must implement digital scholarship. Overall, Borgman urges her readers to think critically about how—and why—the academic community is building digital infrastructure to support and supplement scholarly research.

Brennan, Sheila. 2016. “Public, First.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, 384–89. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Brennan looks at the use of the term public digital humanities and suggests that it has been misappropriated in some contexts. She argues that simply putting a digital humanities project online does not make it public, per se; rather, if digital humanists want to create public projects, they must consider the public first. Brennan points to the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media as an exemplary instance of public digital humanities / digital history. She also provides a brief summary of the ways in which a public digital humanities project should be accessible to potential audiences. Overall, Brennan suggests that the public and public engagement should be considered at the forefront of a public digital humanities and should not be assumed as a de facto element of making digital humanities work available on the web.

Burke, Peter. 2000. A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Burke discusses the various agents and elements of social knowledge production with a specific focus on intellectuals and Europe in the early modern period (until c. 1750). He argues that knowledge is always plural and that various types of knowledge develop, surface, intersect, and play concurrently. Burke relies on sociology, including the work of Émile Durkheim, and critical theory, including the work of Michel Foucault, as a basis to develop his own notions of social knowledge production. He acknowledges that the church, scholarly institutions, the government, and the printing press have all had a significant effect on knowledge production and dissemination, often affirmatively but occasionally through restriction or containment. Furthermore, Burke explores how both “heretics” (humanist revolutionaries) and more conventional academic structures developed the university as a knowledge institution.

Burke, Peter. 2012. A Social History of Knowledge II: From the Encyclopedie to Wikipedia. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Burke develops his research from the first volume (A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot) by expanding his scope from the early modern period into the twentieth century. He continues to rely on certain foundational notions for this volume: knowledge is plural and varied; knowledge is produced by various institutions and conditions instead of solely by individuals; and the social production of knowledge is intrinsically connected to the economic and political environments in which it develops. As with the first volume, Burke focuses mainly on academic knowledge, with brief forays into other forms or sites of knowledge.

Butler, Judith. 2022. “The Public Futures of the Humanities.” Daedalus 151 (3): 40–53. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01927.

Butler contextualizes the question of the future of the humanities within larger questions about the future of humanity in the face of economic crisis, climate change, and other existential threats. From the premise that the value of the humanities as a discipline cannot be demonstrated by arguing for utilitarian value to other disciplines or using the neoliberal logic that threatens it, she instead calls for the humanities to be valued on their own terms. Although those working within humanities departments must work within existing neoliberal and institutional structures, the vital function of humanistic inquiry in challenging, resisting, and imagining an alternative to current realities must be recognized and championed within and beyond academia. Moreover, the connections between the humanities and the arts–particularly the arts as they are engaged with and practiced in communities–must be strengthened as a foundation for demonstrating their continuing value.

Chan, Anela, Richard Chenhall, Tamara Kohn, and Carolyn Stevens. 2017. ‘Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Brokerage in the Digital Humanities’. Digital Humanities Quarterly 011 (3). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/3/000336/000336.html.

Chan et al. discuss the collaboration between a group of anthropologists and a web developer to explore how interdisciplinary research can enrich both disciplines when working in a public digital project. The authors compare web developers to a knowledge broker, because they establish links between the researchers, the interface, and a public audience while facilitating the communication of knowledge. This concept was applied in the project Sonic Japan, a repository of audio clips from this country. The project website was created through the Agile iterative process of software development, which consists of constantly designing and testing software products instead of taking a long time to release a final product. Such a methodology differs from the traditional humanities approach where research questions and goals are not always clear from the start. Despite these differences in methodology and roles, the authors conclude that interdisciplinary work can create new knowledge and evoke new ways of thinking for all parties involved.

Chan, Leslie. 2004. “Supporting and Enhancing Scholarship in the Digital Age.” Canadian Journal of Communication 29 (3): 277–300.

Chan argues that the key goal of open access is to maximize the impact of research by reaching the largest number of readers possible. This impact can be measured by counting citation references connected to specific articles. The author summarizes a study conducted by the Institute of Scientific Information that found, when studying 190 journals, that those with open access and those with proprietary access showed no difference in impact. However, Chan argues that these data are invalid because the study took the journal, not the individual article, as its unit of measurement. Conducting his own research, Chan finds that there was, in fact, an impact factor difference of 300% in favour of open access articles. For Chan, knowledge is a public good and must be distributed as openly as possible.

Christie, Alex, Jana M. Usiskin, Jentery Sayers, and Kathryn Tanigawa. 2014. “Digital Humanities, Public Humanities.” Introduction to New American Notes Online 5. https://nanocrit.com/issues/issue5/introduction-digital-humanities-public-humanities

Christie et al. point to some threads in the conversation about the intrinsic relationship between digital and public humanities. They argue that, due to the great variety of possibilities for projects in the digital humanities, it is necessary to pay attention to context and representation, and to be culturally critical of technologies in order to develop socially meaningful projects, without taking the academy as a starting point, and to really engage with communities and social justice issues. The authors suggest that public scholarship must be made and conveyed through multiple modalities, and that bodies and embodied work are important both for digital and public knowledge production. To support this argument, Christie et al. use examples of projects that, while using digital technologies and media as essential for their design and execution also incorporate physical spaces in order to reach the public, including the Women Who Rock (WWR) project, the Spar project, and the Leimert Phone Company project. Finally, they call for more cultural criticism in digital humanities, and remark that technologies cannot be seen as neutral or passive, but rather must be situated, contextualized, and criticized.

Davidson, Deborah, editor. 2016. The Tattoo Project: Commemorative Tattoos, Visual Culture, and the Digital Archive. Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Scholars.

In this edited collection, Davidson introduces The Tattoo Project, an in-development open, community-generated digital archive of commemorative tattoos. The project provides a repository for sharing and preserving images of commemorative tattoos, as well as a research database and site for community building. The collection includes chapters addressing the history and culture of tattoos, personal narratives, creative writing, and critical examinations of digital archives, digital culture, and visual culture. The importance of community engagement and knowledge mobilization is emphasized throughout and is the focus of Krista Jensen’s chapter “Knowledge Mobilization: Engaging Beyond the Academy Walls.” Jensen contextualizes the project’s KMb function alongside SSHRC’s definition of knowledge mobilization and describes how the Tattoo Project uses a digital platform to bring together an interdisciplinary group of “researchers, tattooists, people with commemorative tattoos, artists, wellness consultants, students,” among others (193), building community and understanding of the cultural and sociological significance of commemorative tattoos.

Doidge, Scott, John Doyle, and Trevor Hogan. 2020. “The University in the Global Age: Reconceptualising the Humanities and Social Sciences for the Twenty-First Century.” Educational Philosophy & Theory 52 (11): 1126–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1752186.

Ellison, Julie. 2013. “The New Public Humanists.” PMLA 128 (2): 289–98. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2013.128.2.289

Ellison observes a change in public humanities, which is traditionally understood in opposition to academic humanities, toward a more in-between position. She argues that in the last few decades the notion of public humanities has transformed into publicly-engaged scholarship in humanities. Such a transformation makes it difficult to even identify those involved: a group that Ellison calls new public humanists. The author lists various examples of programs and institutes to show how the idea of public humanities is not being considered without academic collaboration. Thus, the author points out, doing, understanding, and writing public humanities projects means to work in complex roles in and between organizations. Furthermore, she concludes by stressing the importance of considering how to exercise institutional agency for sustaining new public humanities scholars, since they can become marginalized in traditional departments.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2019. Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Fitzpatrick ruminates on the current state of academia with a focus on dominant trends toward competition, individualism, and weakening public support. She argues that a substantial shift is required in order to reinstate public trust and build relationships with the larger communities that universities are a part of. Moreover, Fitzpatrick suggests that making scholarship available is a foundational step in collaborating with others, in line with the community engagement for which she advocates throughout the book. Overall, Fitzpatrick argues that such a transition requires an embrace of listening over telling, of care over competition, and of working with the public rather than in isolation and insulation—in short, it requires the generous thinking (and actions) of the book’s title.

Heinisch, Barbara. 2020. ‘Citizen Humanities as a Fusion of Digital and Public Humanities?’ Magazén, no. 2 (December): 143–79. https://doi.org/10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2020/02/001.

Heinisch examines the contributions and commonalities of digital and public humanities to the recent concept of citizen humanities. She finds that digitalisation and greater involvement by the public supported the establishment of this field. To compare these three forms of humanities (digital, public, and citizen), Heinish analyzes how the citizen humanities uphold the principles of responsible research and innovation, particularly the strong focus on ethics that citizen humanities have toward the participation of people in research and the public engagement with a wide variety of groups. Citizen humanities differ from digital humanities because they have a larger audience composed of non-academics, while the public humanities focus on building partnerships with communities more than on knowledge co-production. This analysis leads the author to conclude that citizen humanities is more than a simple fusion of digital and public humanities because of its goal of engaging members of the public to co-produce knowledge.

Lapointe, Sandra, and Shannon Boss. 2022. ‘Inventory of Community-Focused Knowledge Mobilisation Practices in Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts’. Report. The/La Collaborative. https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/28037.

Lapointe and Boss scan Canadian social sciences, humanities, and arts university websites to examine their scholarly activity focused on direct interactions with community partners, such as nonprofits or local governments. They found that universities in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador have the highest average numbers of mentions of community/focused initiatives or projects on their websites, with the most common partners being non-profits or governments, while Indigenous communities and K-12 schools were the least common. Most partnerships had no fixed time limit, which may indicate that experiential education programs and community-engaged initiatives are long-term fixtures for their institutions. However, out of the 78 universities in the scan, 47 do not have community-engagement or knowledge mobilization units that provide institutional infrastructure and support for these partnerships.

Lightowler, Claire, and Christine Knight. 2013. “Sustaining Knowledge Exchange and Research Impact in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Investing in Knowledge Broker Roles in UK Universities.” Evidence & Policy 9 (3): 317–34. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426413X662644.

McMaster Humanities. 2013. Knowledge Mobilization in the Humanities - Keynote Address with Ted Hewitt (SSHRC). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxREmroHr7A.

This keynote address by Ted Hewitt, executive vice president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), was given as part of Workshop on Knowledge Mobilization in the Humanities hosted at McMaster University on May 6, 2013. After introducing the question of the utility or use value of social sciences and humanities research, Hewitt turns his focus to the trend toward greater collaboration between academic groups and between academic groups, industry, and the broader community, citing data from SSHRC funding applications. Hewitt also discusses several SSHRC initiatives designed to promote collaboration and knowledge mobilization, including Partnership Grants and Partnership Development Grants, Future Challenges initiatives, the Storytellers Challenge, and Impact Awards. Although it tends to focus on the social sciences, Hewitt’s talk offers a snapshot of the state of SSH collaboration and its intended future directions.

Morrison, Aimée. 2018. “Of, By, and For the Internet: New Media Studies and Public Scholarship.” The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities, edited by Jentery Sayers, 56–66. New York: Routledge.

Morrison explores the possibilities for viral academic speech to become what she terms public/scholarship. For Morrison, a mode of engagement with new media that weighed the public and scholarly elements more evenly would lead to more transformative, and less disruptive, work. The author takes time to examine and acknowledge her own privilege as a public scholar, as well as the repercussions of doing academic work in the open. She does not shy away from detailing the harm that can be caused from a viral social media presence or incident, especially to marginalized individuals. In this way, Morrison argues, technology should not be seen as automatically disruptive, nor immediately positive; rather, engaging with tools like social media opens up the possibility for transformative work that acknowledges privilege, systemic bias, and potential for harm.

Olmos-Peñuela, Julia, Elena Castro-Martínez, and Pablo D’Este. 2014. “Knowledge Transfer Activities in Social Sciences and Humanities: Explaining the Interactions of Research Groups with Non-Academic Agents.” Research Policy 43 (4): 696–706. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2013.12.004.

Olmos-Peñuela, Julia, Jordi Molas-Gallart, and Elena Castro-Martínez. 2014. “Informal Collaborations between Social Sciences and Humanities Researchers and Non-Academic Partners.” Science and Public Policy 41 (4): 493–506. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/sct075.

Phipps, David J., and Stan Shapson. 2009. “Knowledge Mobilisation Builds Local Research Collaborations for Social Innovation.” Evidence & Policy 5 (3): 211–27. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/ep/2009/00000005/00000003/art00002.

Provençal, Johanne. 2009. Knowledge Mobilization of Social Sciences and Humanities Research: Moving beyond a "Zero-Sum Language Game. PhD Dissertation, Vancouver, BC: Simon Fraser University. https://summit.sfu.ca/item/9909.

Johanne Provençal’s PhD dissertation analyzes the effects of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s (SSHRC) policies related to knowledge mobilization in an institutional context. Drawing on discourse theory and game theory, she argues that these policies have created a “zero-sum language game,” in which pressure from SSHRC and other sources to mobilize knowledge is negated by a lack of recognition of that work in academic institutions and culture: it is impossible for a researcher to “win” at both. Situating discussions of knowledge mobilization within SSHRC’s history from its inception in 1977, Provençal presents evidence for this claim from rhetorical analysis of SSHRC policy documents and data from review, tenure, and promotion documents from Canadian universities. In addition, she suggests strategies for moving beyond this zero-sum language game that would benefit the research enterprise and researchers engaging in knowledge mobilization activities. She concludes by suggesting that the political, institutional, and cultural change needed to resolve this paradox can be advanced through careful attention to rhetorical choices, such as how “knowledge” is rhetorically defined.

Provençal, Johanne. 2011. “Social Sciences and Humanities Research and the Public Good: A Synthesis of Presentations and Discussions.” Scholarly and Research Communication 2 (2). https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2011v2n2a32.

This report on the one-day workshop Social Sciences and Humanities Research and the Public Good held in May 2010 at Concordia University offers a synopsis of the workshop and outlines some themes that emerged from it. The workshop was designed to bring together those working in the areas of public knowledge and knowledge mobilization to identify shared interests and opportunities for collaboration. Its emergent themes included “opening up scholarly journals,” knowledge mobilization," the engaged university,” and “media reception.” The workshop included presentations addressing the changing research administration environment, profiles of successful and innovative KMb initiatives, market considerations, open access and broadening the reach of research through journalism, and the rhetoric of knowledge mobilization. In addition, the workshop schedule included group discussions intended to encourage collaboration among participants.

Public Humanities Hub. “Defining the Public Humanities » Public Humanities Hub.” n.d. Public Humanities Hub. Accessed December 2, 2022. https://publichumanities.sites.olt.ubc.ca/about/what-are-the-public-humanities/.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. 2019. “Guidelines for Effective Knowledge Mobilization.” https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/policies-politiques/knowledge_mobilisation-mobilisation_des_connaissances-eng.aspx.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s (SSHRC) guidelines define knowledge mobilization and related terms such as outputs, outcomes, and impacts and outline strategies for planning KMb activities for research projects in the humanities and social sciences. These strategies include identifying audiences or users, planned outcomes, and potential impacts of the research. The Guidelines also note that data management and sharing and evaluation are essential elements to consider. In addition, they include links to related policies and resources and case studies showing examples of the best practices that the Guidelines describe. Although the Guidelines are intended for applicants to SSHRC’s funding programs, they are foundational in the area of KMb in the humanities as one of the few resources specific to the social sciences and humanities.

Smulyan, Susan, ed. 2020. Doing Public Humanities. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003058038.

Stommel, Jesse. 2018. “The Public Digital Humanities.” In Disrupting the Digital Humanities, edited by Dorothy Kim and Jesse Stommel, 79–90. Santa Barbara: Punctum Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv19cwdqv.8

Stommel defines the public digital humanities as a Venn diagram at the point where public, digital, and humanities work intersect. He argues that making scholarly work legible to the public and helping it find audiences is a form of outreach, community building, and advocacy. An example of this work is the Hybrid Pedagogy journal, which he founded. The journal aims to make publishing more pedagogical and to make pedagogy more public and dialogic, which includes making the work legible to a broader audience and embracing post-print publishing. Stommel concludes by saying that digital humanities cannot innovate through competition and hype cycles, but by listening to more diverse voices and advocating for marginalized teachers, scholars, and students.

UNESCO, Canadian Commission for UNESCO, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. n.d. Imagining the Future of Knowledge Mobilization : Perspectives from UNESCO Chairs. https://canadacommons.ca/artifacts/2366768/imagining-the-future-of-knowledge-mobilization/3387795/.

Wickman, Matthew. 2016. ‘What Are the Public Humanities? No, Really, What Are They?’ University of Toronto Quarterly 85 (4): 6–11. https://doi.org/10.3138/utq.85.4.6.

Wickman analyzes the results of a survey of 61 members of the International Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes inquiring about the respondents’ views of the impact and faculty participation in public humanities. The author conducted this study because discussions of the public humanities focus on the fields’ ideals rather than its practices. 86% of the respondents considering that teaching had an impact on the public, compared to 32% thinking that a peer-reviewed publication had public impact. These results indicate a deep divide between public and academic work alongside a contradictory belief that public work is important to the university, leading him to state that the public humanities is a conflicted ideal.

Winter, Caroline, Tyler Fontenot, Luis Meneses, Alyssa Arbuckle, Ray Siemens, and the ETCL and INKE Research Groups. 2020. “Foundations for the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences Commons: Exploring the Possibilities of Digital Research Communities.” Pop! Public. Open. Participatory 2 (October). https://popjournal.ca/issue02/winter

This paper introduces the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Commons, an open online space where Canadian humanities and social sciences researchers and stakeholders can gather to share information and resources, make connections, and build community. Situated at the intersection of the fields of digital scholarship, open access, digital humanities, and social knowledge creation, the Canadian HSS Commons is being developed as part of a research program investigating how a not-for-profit, community-partnership research commons could benefit the humanities and social sciences community in Canada. This paper considers an intellectual foundation for conceptualizing the commons, its potential benefits, and its role in the Canadian scholarly publishing ecosystem; it explores how the Canadian HSS Commons’ open, community-based platform complements existing research infrastructure serving the Canadian humanities and social sciences research community.

Why Knowledge Mobilization?

Adamson, Christopher. 2021. “Enabling Public Scholars through Faculty Development.” Pop! Public. Open. Participatory, no. 3 (November). https://popjournal.ca/issue03/adamson.

Ang, Ien. 2004. “Who Needs Cultural Research?” In Cultural Studies and Practical Politics: Theory, Coalition Building, and Social Activism, edited by Pepi Leystina, 477–83. New York: Blackwell.

Ang ruminates on the current relationship between cultural studies, the university, the public, and society at large. She argues that not only do individuals benefit from cultural studies work, but they in fact rely on this sort of work to navigate, comprehend, and meaningfully contribute to an increasingly complex world. Ang advocates for the detachment of cultural studies from corporate-based funding, as she worries that these sorts of partnerships will, by catering to popular will and interest, falsely skew and inadequately represent the field of cultural research. Ang asserts that social knowledge production must be supported by a knowledge infrastructure that holistically approaches the study and creation of culture.

Ankeny, Rachel A., and Lisa M. Given. 2018. “Creating Research Value Needs More than Just Science – Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences Can Help.” The Conversation. June 18, 2018. http://theconversation.com/creating-research-value-needs-more-than-just-science-arts-humanities-social-sciences-can-help-97083.

Ankeny and Given argue that interdisciplinary collaborations between science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) and humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) disciplines are essential for addressing the world’s most complex problems. Comparing funding strategies for HASS research in Australia and Canada, the authors ask how Australia can remain competitive in the global research environment when the disciplines that most strongly foster creativity and literacy (including information and technological literacy) are under-resourced. They offer examples of innovative STEMM–HASS projects of their own and by other researchers that illustrate the potential of such collaborations and the wide applicability of their results.

Arbuckle, Alyssa. 2020. “How Can We Broaden and Diversify Humanities Knowledge Translation?” Pop! Public. Open. Participatory 1. https://doi.org/10.48404/POP.2020.12

Humanities research is extremely relevant for the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. Despite the growing corpus of humanities research, Arbuckle argues, there are few explicit translation mechanisms from academic work to broader communities. Building off such a premise, Arbuckle looks at where knowledge translation is occurring in other fields and what lessons might be learned for the wider and more efficient circulation of humanities work.

Arts and Humanities Research Council. 2009. “Leading the World: The Economic Impact of UK Arts and Humanities Research.” https://apo.org.au/node/69772.

Ayers, Edward L. 2009. “Where the Humanities Live.” Daedalus 138 (1): 24–34. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed.2009.138.1.24.

Bate, Jonathan, ed. 2011. The Public Value of the Humanities. The WISH List. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781849662451.

Pushing back against the instrumentalist view of literature taken, Bate argues, by the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF), he contends (channeling some of his colleagues’ voices) that the humanities have cultural, political, and economic benefits that can not always be quantified or commoditized. The chapters that follow are organized into clusters: Learning from the Past includes examinations of history, archaeology, and classics. Looking Around Us focuses on landscape studies, architecture, museums, arts, and music. The chapters in Informing Policy look at law, genocide studies, history, and cultural economics. The final cluster, Using Words, Thinking Hard, focuses on language, linguistics, literature, and philosophy. All of them support the central argument of the volume that, in addition to their more tangible benefits, the humanities are invaluable for helping us understand the human world.

Benneworth, Paul. 2015. “Putting Impact into Context: The Janus Face of the Public Value of Arts and Humanities Research.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14 (1): 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022214533893.

Benneworth, Paul. 2015. “Tracing How Arts and Humanities Research Translates, Circulates and Consolidates in Society.. How Have Scholars Been Reacting to Diverse Impact and Public Value Agendas?” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14 (1): 45–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022214533888.

Benneworth traces a brief history of the idea that the humanities are in crisis, an idea rooted in Enlightenment utilitarianism and the Industrial Revolution. Surveying recent literature exploring the issue of the impact of the humanities, he argues that, although many policymakers have in mind a specific model of societal impact focused on economic value, applying that model to humanities research can usefully reveal ways in which arts and humanities research follows a similar pipeline. This “traceable upscaling” model is a heuristic that fits some research areas well, such as pharmaceuticals: for instance, new knowledge about a promising drug may be generated in a lab, then patented by the university, which licenses it to a start-up for development, which sells it to a larger biotech company, at each stage generating measurable economic impacts. Benneworth acknowledges that this heuristic is simplified and flawed, but demonstrates with several examples how applying it to humanities research and innovation makes the upscaling of humanities knowledge traceable. He concludes by reiterating that social benefit should be considered more broadly than the traceable upscaling model allows, including potential as well as realized benefits.

Bostic, Heidi. 2016. “The Humanities Must Engage Global Grand Challenges.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. March 30, 2016. https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-humanities-must-engage-global-grand-challenges/.

The British Academy. 2004. “‘That Full Complement of Riches’: The Contributions of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences to the Nation’s Wealth.” London: The British Academy. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/1909/Full-Complement-Riches-Contributions-Arts-Humanities-Social-Sciences-Nation-Wealth.pdf.

The British Academy. 2008. “Punching Our Weight: The Humanities and Social Sciences in Public Policy Making.” https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/3715/Punching_Our_Weight_report_2008_3.pdf.

This report presents findings from a study conducted by the British Academy into ways that arts, humanities, and social sciences research contributes to policy development and to societal well being more broadly. Noting that the challenges policymakers face are increasingly complex and global in scale, requiring long-term vision, the report offers numerous recommendations for making HSS research more accessible, usable, and used in public policy. It points out that, although the policy and broader impacts of HSS research may be difficult to measure, they are nonetheless vitally important. Overall, the report argues that HSS research should be sought out by the policy community, that HSS researchers should make their work more accessible and relevant for policymakers, and that engagement with policy should be recognized by academic institutions and communities.

Brooks, Peter. 2014. “Introduction.” In The Humanities and Public Life, edited by Peter Brooks and Hilary Jewett, 1–14. Fordham University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x04xg.4.

Cassuto, Leonard. “Making a Public Ph.D.” 2012. The Chronicle of Higher Education. February 13, 2012. https://www.chronicle.com/article/making-a-public-ph-d/.

Castro Martínez, Elena, Ignacio Fernández de Lucio, Marián Pérez Marín, and Felipe Criado Boado. 2008. “The knowledge transfer from the Humanities: possibilities and characteristics.” Arbor CLXXXIV (732): 619–36. https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2008.i732.211.

Chan, Leslie, Budd Hall, Florence Piron, Rajesh Tandon, and Lorna William. 2020b. “Open Science Beyond Open Access: For and With Communities. A Step Towards the Decolonization of Knowledge.” The Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s IdeaLab. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3946773

Chan, Hall, Piron, Tandon, and Williams argue that it is time to move beyond foundational understandings of open access and open science. They suggest that academic institutions and researchers should open themselves up further to increase relevance within the broader conception of civil society. The authors gloss some of the historical reasons for the relative openness and closedness of scholarly activity to broader society, including the fact that knowledge workers sought refuge in the university as a space to think critically without fear of censorship or worse from the ruling powers of their time. Chan et al. are quick to point out, however, that such self-protection developed into an exclusionary practice, or a way to gatekeep who is and is not considered expert. This has many present-day ramifications, including for Indigenous and marginalized peoples whose knowledges are often not valued in scientific contexts. Overall, the authors suggest that as open scholarship initiatives, policies, and theories evolve they should be expanded to include a more decolonial approach to knowledge creation and sharing.

Dawkins, “The Necessity of Public Humanities” (research poster) https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/usri/usri2021/researchoutputshowcase/259/

Gaertner, David. 2023. “Closed, Open, Stopped: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Possibility of Decolonial Digital Humanities.” In Future Horizons: Canadian Digital Humanities, edited by Paul Barrett and Sarah Roger, 49–73. University of Ottawa Press. https://press.uottawa.ca/en/9780776640068/future-horizons/.

Gallagher, Tony. 2015. “Civic Engagement and the Arts and Humanities: A UK Perspective.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14 (3): 293–97. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022215583948.

Gascoigne, Toss, and Jenni Metcalfe. 2005. “Commercialisation of Research Activities in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in Australia.” Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. https://apo.org.au/node/69488.

Gisselmann Jessen, Charlotte, Nanna Rosenfeldt, Kenneth Salomonsen, and Mikkel Bülow Skovborg. 2011. “The Social Sciences and the Humanities – Use It Don’t Lose It.” DEA. https://www.datocms-assets.com/22590/1586629647-the-social-sciences-and-the-humanities.pdf.

Gobel, Ursula. 2021. “Knowledge Mobilization Will Help Canada Face the next Major Challenge.” Policy Options. February 8, 2021. https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/february-2021/knowledge-mobilization-will-help-canada-face-the-next-major-challenge/.

Gobel explores how knowledge mobilization in the humanities and social sciences can be supported after the efforts from Canadian researchers to provide evidence for policymakers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Addressing complex global challenges, Gobel argues, requires synthesizing knowledge from different disciplines and knowledge systems so that it can be put into action, as well as a diverse pool of research talent. These efforts are needed to inform policy needs, especially for multidisciplinary issues, such as COVID-19, environmental research, global health, and the digital economy. Furthering knowledge mobilization initiatives can strengthen Canada’s research capital and spark positive social change for Canadians.

Goggin, Gerard. 2020. “The Importance of Humanities Interfaces for Research and Its Social Futures.” Communication Research and Practice 6 (4): 298–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2020.1886965.

Hazelkorn, Ellen, Mairtin Ryan, Andrew Gibson, and Elaine Ward. 2013. “Recognising the Value of the Arts and Humanities in a Time of Austerity.” Humaniteis in the European Research Area. https://arrow.tudublin.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=cserrep.

Henville, Letitia. 2022. “Against Utility and Instrumentalization: Knowledge Mobilization for the Humanities.” University Affairs (blog). February 24, 2022. https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/ask-dr-editor/against-utility-and-instrumentalization-knowledge-mobilization-for-the-humanities/.

You don’t, argues Henville, need to start a podcast to mobilise knowledge. But you do need to work with others. Henville is responding to an anonymous “Ask Dr. Editor” column question from an English poetry scholar. The scholar describes their discomfort with knowledge mobilisation requirements when applying for Social Science And Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funding, concluding with the concern that SSHRC is no longer for non-utility oriented scholarship. After reminding them that their application will be reviewed by their peers, who quite likely understand the kind of research they do, Henville offers a number of recommendations: developing collaborations with scholars and interested community members, budgeting so that you can pay these collaborators for their time. and playing the game by collecting metrics such as hours, event size, or Q & A length.

Hsu, Wendy. 2016. “Lessons on Public Humanities from the Civic Sphere.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, 280–86. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hsu presents some lessons learned in the professional experience of working with civic technology in the public sector in order to think about public work in digital humanities. The author advocates for the importance of including public participation early and in-process to build projects with and not for the community, considering that not only solving but also defining the problems must be done collectively. Hsu relies on the work of the postcolonial intellectual Gayatri Spivak to state that humanistic practices of visioning, speculating, and reflecting are founded in interpretation, which can also lead to creative actions of making and design. Thus, she claims that digital humanists should listen more to the public, interpret problems collectively, and apply their digital making and design skills to organize public projects with a civic cause, prototype community-driven digital objects, or intervene in civic processes in a way that pushes them toward more social justice. Moreover, Hsu notes that academic institutions and their members are closer to the centre of decision-making power, and collaborating with the community is a way to have a dialogue across lines of power.

Hughes, Alan, Michael Kitson, and Jocelyn Probert. 2011. “Hidden Connections: Knowledge Exchange between the Arts and Humanities and the Private, Public and Third Sectors.” Arts and Humanities Research Council. https://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/specialreport-hiddenconnections.pdf.

The Impact Group. 2008. “The Economic Role and Influence of the Social Sciences and Humanities: A Conjecture.” Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. https://canadacommons.ca/artifacts/1219446/the-economic-role-and-influence-of-the-social-sciences-and-humanities/1772523/.

Liu, Alan, Abigail Droge, Scott Kleinman, Lindsay Thomas, Dan C. Baciu, and Jeremy Douglass. 2022. “What Everyone Says: Public Perceptions of the Humanities in the Media.” Daedalus 151 (3): 19–39. https://www.amacad.org/publication/what-everyone-says-public-perceptions-humanities-media.

Liu et al. report on the results of the WhatEvery1Says project, which aims to analyze and question the problems in the public perception of the humanities. In this study, they used topic modelling to identify patterns in how the humanities are mentioned in the U.S. media. Their findings suggest that the humanities are usually associated with higher education or people’s everyday experiences, as they are mentioned in cultural event listings and obituaries. Based on the results, the authors state that the humanities are embedded in larger human crises, so there is no isolated crisis of the humanities. Therefore, the humanities can partner with the natural and social sciences to address the challenges and crises of our time. To this end, the authors propose four key aspects for the humanities to practice: working in between small and large scales, in the public and academic spheres; providing local or particular contexts for global challenges; linking humanities practices to more general values; and working with methodologies drawn from across the disciplines.

Losh, Elizabeth. 2012. “Hacktivism and the Humanities: Programming Protest in the Era of the Digital University.” Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 161–86. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Losh considers the role of activism by computational means, i.e. hacktivism, in the digital humanities. She examines how some digital humanities scholars and advocates support hacktivism, and also questions how effective digital humanities hacking interventions are. Losh concludes by calling for a hybrid practice, whereby more digital humanities scholars consider how they could engage in hacking to become more publicly engaged intellectuals.

Marks, Kathy. 2015. ‘The Power of the Humanities: Case Studies from Leading Australian Researchers’. https://doi.org/10.4225/50/5AA85920A331C.

Marks profiles a sample of humanities researchers in Australia who are addressing local and international social issues through their work. The researchers work on a wide range of research projects, from influencing language policy in Myanmar to changing the culture of professional rugby players or protecting the heritage of Sydney’s Chinatown. These cases, selected by the Australian Academy of Humanities, highlight how the humanities provide historical perspectives to social issues and have multiple applications for responding to the challenges of our time.

Maxwell, John W. 2015. “Beyond Open Access to Open Publication and Open Scholarship.” Scholarly and Research Communication 6 (3). https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2015v6n3a202

Maxwell imagines a humanities-based digital scholarly communication system modeled after prevalent web technologies, practices, and metaphors. He compares the opportunities that such an approach might bear to traditional scholarly communication practices. For Maxwell, the research outputs of both models share a set of common characteristics (albeit to different degrees): they reflect a considerable amount of time and labour; they are original works; they are rigorous and reviewed by experts; they are available for engagement; and they are able to be archived or preserved for future reference. Maxwell looks beyond the common characteristics of web-based and traditional academic publishing models, however, and considers how the former could break away from the latter.

Nussbaum, Martha C. 2010. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities - Updated Edition. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc77dh6.

This book explores the connection between liberal arts education and democratic citizenship. Nussbaum argues that educational systems around the world have prioritized education for profit while discarding humanities education, even though it provides the skills needed to keep democracies alive, such as critical thinking, argumentation, and respect and empathy for others. The author draws on the ideas of philosophers, such as Rabindranath Tagore, John Dewey, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to emphasize the relevance of the humanities in educating thoughtful and critical citizens. Despite their importance, Nussbaum warns that the humanities are being downsized in almost every country, threatening to undermine the very foundations of modern democratic societies.

Olmos-Peñuela, Julia, Paul Benneworth, and Elena Castro-Martínez. 2015. “Are Sciences Essential and Humanities Elective? Disentangling Competing Claims for Humanities’ Research Public Value.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14 (1): 61–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022214534081.

O’Malley, Mary. 2012. “Afterthoughts: The Walls.” In Higher Education and Civic Engagement: Comparative Perspectives, edited by Lorraine McIlrath, Ann Lyons, and Ronaldo Munck, 241–49. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137074829_15.

Rudd, Murray A. 2015. “Awareness of Humanities, Arts and Social Science (HASS) Research Is Related to Patterns of Citizens’ Community and Cultural Engagement.” Social Sciences 4 (2): 313–38. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci4020313.

Sánchez, George J. 2022. “Opening the Humanities to New Fields & New Voices.” Daedalus. https://www.amacad.org/publication/opening-humanities-new-fields-new-voices.

Smulyan, Susan. 2022. “Why Public Humanities?” Daedalus 151 (3): 124–37. https://www.amacad.org/publication/why-public-humanities.

Smulyan discusses the state of the field of public humanities at universities in the United States. She defines the public humanities as “a process of discovery undertaken by collaborative groups [...] with communities outside the campus” (125), which challenges the translational approach of explaining research to non-academic audiences. This definition of public humanities strives to reimagine the nature of scholarship and how public-facing work might fit into, or change, the current systems of alt-ac jobs and tenure processes. The author illustrates this by describing the big and small frames of public humanities in her work: one as a participant-researcher in a large-scale public arts group reimagining scholarship and the other as a professor of public humanities at Brown University, an institution slower to change its tenure policies. While Smulyan acknowledges that the public humanities alone may not change the university, she concludes that they are at the centre of the ideas calling for a renewal of the humanities.

Sommer, Doris. 2014. The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Townsend, Robert B., and Norman Marshall Bradburn. 2022. “The State of the Humanities circa 2022.” American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Summer 2022. https://www.amacad.org/publication/state-humanities-circa-2022.

Woodward, Kathleen. 2009. ‘The Future of the Humanities- in the Present & in Public’. Daedalus 138 (1): 110–23. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed.2009.138.1.110.

Woodward explores the divide between the university and society in the United States. Noting that humanities centres have studied innovative topics in interdisciplinary contexts, such as critical race studies, feminist studies, and cultural studies, she argues that humanities centres can promote new ways of research and learning by engaging in project and program transfer, in a similar way as technology transfer is understood. Woodward then analyzes why the word intellectual is absent in public scholarship discussions, which she links to the shift from the view of higher education as a public good to a private one. In response, she encourages intellectuals to write for broader audiences and to retake the democratic tradition of the university, which had a vision of service to the public.

Understanding and Measuring Impact

Alperin, Juan Pablo, Carol Muñoz Nieves, Lesley Schimanski, Gustavo E. Fischman, Meredith T. Niles, and Erin C. McKiernan. 2018. “How Significant Are the Public Dimensions of Faculty Work in Review, Promotion, and Tenure Documents?” ELife 8 (February): e42254. https://doi.org/10.17613/M6W950N35

Alperin, Muñoz Nieves, Schimanski, Fischman, Niles, and McKiernan study how concepts of publicness and community engagement are represented in institutional review, promotion, and tenure guidelines and adjudication. The authors conclude that although these values are often touted by the university, they are sequestered to service considerations in the actual adjudication of faculty. Since service is already broadly considered as less important than research and teaching, the public aspects of one’s academic work are not valued as highly as research impact. Alperin et al. conclude that universities should consider how their civic missions could be better undertaken if faculty were rewarded for more open and/or more publicly engaged work.

Bandy, J., Mary F. Price, P. H. Clayton, J. Metzker, G. Nigro, S. Stanlick, S. Etheridge Woodson, A. Bartel, and S. Gale. 2018. “Democratically Engaged Assessment: Reimagining the Purposes and Practices of Assessment in Community Engagement.” https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/17729.

Belfiore, Eleonora. 2015. “‘Impact’, ‘Value’ and ‘Bad Economics’: Making Sense of the Problem of Value in the Arts and Humanities.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14 (1): 95–110. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022214531503.

Benneworth, Paul. 2015. “Tracing How Arts and Humanities Research Translates, Circulates and Consolidates in Society.. How Have Scholars Been Reacting to Diverse Impact and Public Value Agendas?” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14 (1): 45–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022214533888.

Dewaele, “Understanding collaborative interactions in relation to research impact in social sciences and humanities: A meta-ethnography” https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvaa033

Edwards, Claire. n.d. “Impact at the AHRC.” Accessed September 7, 2023. https://www.mmu.ac.uk/media/mmuacuk/content/documents/english/cell/AHRC--impact_Manchester.pdf.

Ellison, Julie, and Timothy K Eatman. n.d. “Scholarship in Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University,” 61.

Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. 2017. Approaches to Assessing Impacts in the Humanities and Social Sciences. https://www.federationhss.ca/sites/default/files/sites/default/uploads/policy/2017/impact_report_en_final.pdf

Building upon the 2014 report The Impacts of Humanities and Social Science Research: Working Paper, the Federation’s report discusses the goals, benefits, and potential pitfalls of assessing research impact for the humanities and social sciences and provides recommendations for approaches to take when assessing such impacts. Noting that there is increasing demand for impact assessments from university administrators and researchers, the report presents a set of case studies illustrating impact assessment in a variety of Canadian research contexts and discusses the research-to-impact pathway as a useful model. In its recommendations, it notes that, although the benefits to assessing impact of humanities and social sciences research are substantial, “impact” should be defined broadly and indicators applied judiciously to reflect the diversity of humanities and social sciences research and disciplinary definitions of impact. Impacts should be assessed collectively, due to the incremental and hermeneutic nature of the work and the timeframe in which impacts develop. Researchers should lead discussions about the impact of their work, but institutional supports must be put in place to reduce the administrative burden on researchers.

Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. 2014. “The Impacts of Humanities and Social Science Research.” https://apo.org.au/node/173001.

In this working paper, the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences proposes a Canadian framework for conceptualizing and evaluating the impact of research in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. It suggests five categories–scholarship, capacity, the economy, society and culture, and practice and policy–and a set of indicators for each. The paper notes explicitly that the indicators are not intended for review, promotion, and tenure or researcher evaluation, but rather as tools to be used as they are useful. For each indicator, the paper includes a summary of what it measures, what its pros and cons are, and other similar details, as well as a brief contextual and explanatory summary and a list of examples of how the indicator is currently being used to measure research impact. The framework proposed in the working paper is intended as a starting point for discussion and future research, and as such is foundational for developing HSS-specific strategies for evaluating research impact.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2012. “Beyond Metrics: Community Authorization and Open Peer Review.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 452–59. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Fitzpatrick calls for a reform of scholarly communication via open peer review. She argues that the Internet has provoked a conceptual shift wherein (textual) authority is no longer measured by a respected publisher’s stamp; rather, she contends, the community now locates authority. As concepts of authority change and evolve in the digital sphere, so should methods. Peer review should be opened to various scholars in a field as well as to non-experts from other fields and citizen scholars. Fitzpatrick claims that this sort of crowdsourcing of peer review could more accurately represent scholarly and non-scholarly reaction, contribution, and understanding. Digital humanities and new media scholars already have the tools to measure digital engagement with a work; now, a better model of peer review should be implemented to take advantage of the myriad, social, networked ways scholarship is (or could be) produced.

Flecha, Ramón, Marta Soler, Esther Oliver, Lídia Puigvert, Teresa Sordé, Andràs Schubert, Sàndor Soòs, et al. 2015. “IMPACT-EV. Report 3. Impact Evaluation of FP6 (Last Call) and FP7 SSH Research Projects,” February. https://zenodo.org/record/1041950.

Green, Cable. 2017. “Open Licensing and Open Education Licensing Policy.” In Open: The Philosophy and Practices That Are Revolutionizing Education and Science, edited by Rajiv S. Jhangiani and Robert Biswas-Diener, 29–41. London: Ubiquity Press.

Green provides an overview of the Creative Commons licenses and explores how public policymakers can leverage open licensing policies as a solution to high textbook costs. He argues that educators and governments supporting public education have a moral and ethical obligation to share education materials with the world for almost no cost. Creative Commons licenses are the legal foundation for most of the Open Education movement, since they are required for an educational resource to become an open educational resource (OER). Thus, for OERs to go mainstream, it is necessary to have a broader adoption of open education licensing policies, especially for educational resources produced with public funding.

Gulbrandsen, Magnus, and Siri Aanstad. 2015. “Is Innovation a Useful Concept for Arts and Humanities Research?” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14 (1): 9–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022214533890.

Howoldt, David, Henning Kroll, Peter Neuhäusler, and Alexander Feidenheimer. 2022. “Understanding Researchers’ Twitter Uptake, Activity and Popularity—an Analysis of Applied Research in Germany.” Scientometrics, November. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04569-2.

Katrakazis, Theocharis, Alison Heritage, Cath Dillon, Petra Juvan, and Stavroula Golfomitsou. 2018. “Enhancing Research Impact in Heritage Conservation.” Studies in Conservation 63 (8): 450–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2018.1491719.

King’s College London and Digital Science. 2015. “The Nature, Scale and Beneficiaries of Research Impact: An Initial Analysis of Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 Impact Case Studies: An Initial Analysis of Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 Impact Case Studies.” http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/22540/1/Analysis_of_REF_impact.pdf.

“Leiden Statement: The Role of the Social Sciences and Humanities in the Global Research Landscape.” 2014, November. https://apo.org.au/node/69771.

The Leiden Statement responds to the increasing instrumentalization of research and particularly to debates about the value of the social sciences and humanities in the face of it. The Statement complements the Hefei Statement’s (2013) declaration about the value of research universities in today’s complex global environment by making a similar declaration about the vital importance of social sciences and humanities research, as well as the need to value and support it, and its original signatories were the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of East Asian Research Universities (AEARU), the Group of Eight Australia, the League of European Research Universities (LERU), the RU11 Japan, the Russell Group (UK), and the U15 Group of Canadian Universities. The statement includes five broad areas in which research communities and governments can take action: commitment to humanities and social sciences, interdisciplinary research, academic freedom, funding, and international research cooperation.

Levitt, Ruth, Claire Celia, Stephanie Diepeveen, Siobhan Ni Chonaill, Lila Rabinovich, and Jan Tiessen. 2010. “Assessing the Impact of Arts and Humanities Research at the University of Cambridge.” RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR816.html.

Linmans, A. J. M. 2010. “Why with Bibliometrics the Humanities Does Not Need to Be the Weakest Link.” Scientometrics 83 (2): 337–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0088-9.

Linmans proposes new bibliometric indicators for assessing humanities research outputs, as traditional citation analysis was developed for the sciences and does not take into account the specificities of humanities scholarship. The author proposes a three level approach: 1) counting lifetime citations per author (instead of per publication for a restricted time window); 2) measuring the representation of books by the same author in library holdings; and 3) measuring productivity based on the annual number of pages published. These indicators address the limitations of standard citation analysis for the humanities, such as the lack of multi-author publications, the small time windows, the poor coverage of humanities sources in bibliometric databases, and the disregard of citations from outside the Web of Science index. After applying the proposed indicators to a set of 292 Dutch faculty members, Linmans concludes that bibliometric research for the humanities is feasible, but that the methods need to be adapted to the data availability and the research culture of the humanities.

McGillivray, Barbara, Paola Marongiu, Nilo Pedrazzini, Marton Ribary, Mandy Wigdorowitz, and Eleonora Zordan. 2022. “Deep Impact: A Study on the Impact of Data Papers and Datasets in the Humanities and Social Sciences.” Publications 10 (4). https://doi.org/10.3390/publications10040039.

McGillivray et al. argue that publishing data papers–peer reviewed papers describing openly available datasets–is one way for HSS researchers to make their work more open, accessible, and reusable. Data papers are common in STEM fields but not in the humanities, but the authors argue that they make visible the labour involved in generating datasets, which can also be acknowledged by citing the dataset and/or data paper. The authors also note that publishing data papers enables the quantification of the dataset’s impact through citation metrics and altmetrics, such as in their systematic study of the two primary data journals for the humanities: the Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD) and the Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences (RDJ). They found that data papers were most often published after their associated research papers, but sometimes before, suggesting that researchers use this strategy to maximize the impact of their research papers. They also found that data papers strongly and positively affected the impact of datasets and research papers. Their analysis of the JOHD’s Twitter strategies showed that simply announcing data papers did not affect impact, posts that encouraged engagement from the community did. The authors conclude that publishing datasets and data papers is an effective way to maximize the “deep impact” of research in the humanities and call for more research in this area.

Meagher, Laura, Catherine Lyall, and Sandra Nutley. 2008. “Flows of Knowledge, Expertise and Influence: A Method for Assessing Policy and Practice Impacts from Social Science Research.” Research Evaluation 17 (3): 163–73. https://doi.org/10.3152/095820208X331720.

Mohammadi, Ehsan, and Mike Thelwall. 2014. “Mendeley Readership Altmetrics for the Social Sciences and Humanities: Research Evaluation and Knowledge Flows.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 65 (8): 1627–38. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23071.

Molas-Gallart, Jordi. 2015. “Research Evaluation and the Assessment of Public Value.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14 (1): 111–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022214534381.

Nederhof, Anton J. 2006. “Bibliometric Monitoring of Research Performance in the Social Sciences and the Humanities: A Review.” Scientometrics 66 (1): 81–100. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0007-2.

Nowotny, Helga, Thomas König, and Klaus Schuch. 2018. “Impact Re-Loaded.” Impact of Social Sciences and Humanities for a European Research Agenda – Valuation of SSH in mission-oriented research, 28-29 November 2018, Vienna, Austria. https://apo.org.au/node/211201.

Nowotny et al. question the meaning of impact in the social sciences and humanities, which have adopted a defensive tone to prove their societal relevance. The authors argue that these disciplines should rethink impact as the ability to transform society. This understanding of impact goes beyond its instrumental value to particular user groups and instead considers how the humanities and social sciences are embedded within society. For these disciplines to be transformative, the authors suggest that they should not only strive to influence society, but also be open to the influence, needs, and engagement of heterogeneous groups.

O’Brien, Dave. 2015. “Cultural Value, Measurement and Policy Making.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14 (1): 79–94. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022214533892.

Ochsner, Michael, Sven E. Hug, and Hans-Dieter Daniel, eds. 2016. Research Assessment in the Humanities. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29016-4.

Pederson, David Budtz, Jonas Følsgaard Grønvad, and Rolf Hvidfeldt. 2017. “Analysing Co-Creation in Theory and Practice: A Systemic Review of the SSH Impact Literature.” Accomplissh. Aalborg University. https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/analysing-co-creation-in-theory-and-in-practice-a-systemic-review.

Pedersen, David Budtz, Jonas Følsgaard Grønvad, and Rolf Hvidtfeldt. 2020. “Methods for Mapping the Impact of Social Sciences and Humanities—A Literature Review.” Research Evaluation 29 (1): 4–21. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvz033.

Pedersen et al. review 158 academic papers and 125 policy documents to examine and compare the methods for assessing the research impact of the social sciences and humanities. They found a high degree of pluralism in the methods used to evaluate the impact of these disciplines, with different models, theories, and frameworks depending on the country, institution, and research culture. Given all the different approaches for assessing impact, the choice of method is value-laden and makes different assumptions about the nature of research. The main point of agreement among the frameworks is that they all assume that impact is dynamic and complex, so diverse and tailored methods are needed to provide a context-specific assessment. However, the literature review points out that most documents are conceptual rather than empirical, and that some types of research require more time and effort before impact is realized, if it happens at all.

Powles, Jonathan. 2006. “Measures of Quality and Impact in Publicly-Funded Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research.” Report. Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Australia. https://apo.org.au/node/3414.

Richmond, Lesey, Valerie McCutcheon, and K. Cullen. 2008. “Shaping Metrics for HEI Cultural Engagement - Knowledge Transfer.” University of Glasgow. https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/85817/.

Sugimoto, Cassidy R., Sam Work, Vincent Larivière, and Stefanie Haustein. 2017. “Scholarly Use of Social Media and Altmetrics: A Review of the Literature.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 68 (9): 2037–62. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23833.

Sugimoto et al. review the use of various social media platforms in the scholarly communication process and the alternative metrics derived from their use. They found a high degree of heterogeneity in the literature due to the differences in platforms, methods, samples, and time of analysis, which prevents the generalization of studies on altmetrics and scholarly social media use. Despite these limitations, the authors conclude that social media and altmetrics are more than a passing trend in scholarly communication. However, these platforms do not guarantee broader discussions outside the scientific community, as social media might become a new communication channel among scholars rather than a way to reach the general public.

Wixted, Brian, and Catherine Beaudry. 2012. “‘Capturing the Impacts’ of Research: A Discussion Paper Emerging from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s ‘Capturing Impacts’ Initiative.” Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2013/crsh-sshrc/CR22-46-2012-eng.pdf.

This report contextualizes and summarizes the findings of 17 impact studies funded through the Social Science and Humanities Research Council’s (SSHRC) Capturing Impact initiative (2006–2007). It categorizes them as discipline-based, knowledge mobilization, and system-level studies. The report’s key finding from the discipline-based studies is that measuring impact in the humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) is challenging–in part because of the nature of the research and in part because impact is discipline specific–and developing appropriate metrics is crucial. The key point from the knowledge mobilization studies is that simply producing knowledge does not ensure its use, and determining how and for whom knowledge can effectively be mobilized involves considerable work. The key finding from the theoretical and survey-based system-level studies is that these studies counter the persistent myth that research in the sciences contributes directly to society while HASS contributions do not; measuring these impacts requires qualitative and quantitative approaches, in part because they build over time. The report concludes with a further summary of findings, highlighting the challenge of conducting research due to infrastructural issues, such as the SSHRC’s funding structures and the lack of available and interoperable data.

Yang, Siluo, and Mengxue Zheng. 2019. “Performance of Citations and Altmetrics in the Social Sciences and Humanities.” Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 56 (1): 326–35. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.69.

Yang and Zheng use 1,327,934 Web of Science records and 629,586 altmetric records to analyze the statistical correlation between citation and altmetric indicators in humanities and social sciences (HSS) publications. According to their analysis, there is an especially strong correlation between the altmetric readers count and citations, a relatively strong correlation between the altmetric score and citations, and a weak correlation between citations and other altmetric indices, such as social media, blog, and news mentions. However, the correlations vary by subject field, as psychology had higher citations and altmetric scores, while the arts and humanities had the lowest citation rates and altmetric scores. The findings imply that subject fields in the HSS behave rather consistently between citations and altmetrics, and that altmetric indicators can complement traditional bibliometric analyses.