ADHOC Work Group

Executive Summary of Recommendations

May 2003

ADHOC was a joint work group of the ACH and ALLC, charged with examining possibilities for closer collaboration between the two organisations and within the field of digital humanities more widely. The work group was established by association committee meetings in July 2002, with the goal of presenting recommendations at the annual conference at the University of Georgia in May 2003.

This paper summarises the key recommendations of the work group, and, in brief, their rationale. Readers are strongly urged to read the whole of the associated discussion document, where the recommendations and their background and rationale are presented in greater detail.

Membership of ADHOC work group

Invited additional members

Summmary of Recommendations

  1. ALLC and ACH should more closely coordinate their activities, especially in the area of publications and other services to members.
  2. This coordination requires an umbrella organization (ADHO). ADHO would have regional chapters (ALLC/Europe, ACH/North America, and others to be created), and it might also have international affiliates (e.g., the TEI Consortium) not as closely coordinated and not representing humanities computing in specific regions.
  3. The regional chapters might also have regional or national affiliates - i.e. other organisations whose goal is the promotion of humanities computing.
  4. Individuals would be part of the AHDO umbrella by virtue of belonging to a regional chapter or one of the affiliated organisations. ADHO would strongly promote close collaboration and new collaborative initiatives among its member organisations, with the aim of providing the greatest range of benefits to the organisations and their members.
  5. ADHO itself would be governed by a Council with two representatives from each regional chapter, and one from each international affiliate. The Council should do its business principally by email and conference calls, and that business should include the administration of ADHO-level activities, the oversight of ADHO-level finances, etc..
  6. ACH should move its print publishing activities to Literary and Linguistic Computing (LLC), which belongs to ALLC, and the editorial board of this publication should have equal representation from ALLC and ACH (and other regional chapters, when they exist). Computers and the Humanities (CHUM), which belongs to Kluwer, would then no longer be the official journal of the ACH.
  7. ADHO should sponsor a free electronic journal: this journal might republish "best of" LLC (or articles from past issues of CHUM, if Kluwer were willing), but in the main, it should not duplicate the content of LLC.
  8. ADHO should work to coordinate a publishing program that makes the most of the possibilities for synergy among discussion lists, pre-print archives, peer-reviewed electronic and print journals, books, and web sites. As part of its publications program, ADHO should provide reviews (and/or peer-review) of born-digital humanities resources, including software.
  9. Membership in an ADHO regional chapter should be by way of subscription to LLC, and (after funds are provided for central ADHO activities, such as publishing) income from subscriptions should be divided among regional chapters, proportional to the percentage of total ADHO membership each chapter represents.
  10. The ACH/ALLC joint conference should be open to new regional chapters and/or international affiliates, and should include them as equals in the ownership and planning of the conference. Regional chapters might hold their own meetings, and any regional chapter could host the joint annual conference.
  11. ADHO should mandate the highest practical level of multilingualism for publications and communication by ADHO or its regional chapters.

The members of the ADHO Committee recognize that these recommendations will be the occasion for considerable discussion and, no doubt, some disagreement. However, the Commmittee is unanimous in making these recommendations, because we believe they are in the best interest of the organisations involved, and in the best interest of humanities computing as an academic pursuit. We hope that the executive bodies of the ALLC and the ACH will vote to endorse them, and the membership of both organisations will vote to accept them.

Should the proposals be accepted, the next stage would be to establish a transition process. This would be a matter for discussion in the first instance by the ACH Council and the ALLC Committee.

Index of recommendations

Introduction and overview
Organisational structure discussion paper (HS)
Membership & Relationships discussion paper (JU)
Finances discussion paper (HS)
Publications discussion paper (GR)
Conferences discussion paper (JF)
Activities and initiatives discussion paper (EO)
Internationalism & multi-lingualism discussion paper (EB)

Introduction and overview

The reason for setting up the work group was concern on the part of the ACH Council and the ALLC Committee, and also the TEI Board, at membership levels that have been static or falling at a time of unprecedented increases in activity in humanities computing. The work group was asked to consider whether there were opportunities for closer collaboration in a wider range of activities which could enable the constituent organisations to broaden their subscriber base, develop new membership services, and deliver these services as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Very quickly it became clear that all members of the work group were strongly interested in the idea of creating an umbrella organisation, for which the acronym ADHO was proposed (Association of Digital Humanities Organisations). The work group was then referred to as 'adhoc' - the ADHO committee.

The key objectives of the ADHO are to promote the scholarly application of advanced technologies in humanities research and teaching, and to create an associational framework that supports this as effectively as possible across a wide range of activities and countries.

The specific goals of coordinating existing organizations under ADHO should be:

  1. to provide new benefits for members of existing organizations that become constituents of ADHO,
  2. to provide guidelines for ways in which other organizations can affiliate with ADHO without necessarily becoming full-fledged member organizations or regional chapters,
  3. to make it easy and relatively inexpensive for someone who is a member of one regional organization (or affiliate) to become a member of another regional organization,
  4. to reduce duplication of administration and activities wherever doing so would not result in a reduction of benefits to members of existing organizations
At the same time, in order for ADHO to work as an umbrella organization, participation in ADHO by an individual must be an automatic consequence of membership in any of its constituent organizations. This proposal is that:
  1. the members of ADHO itself should be its constituent organizations, not the members of those organizations;
  2. ADHO would provide benefits to its constituent organizations, and where it provides benefits to individuals, it would do so through the member organizations to which they belong.

Organisational structure

Recommendations

It is proposed that

  1. an Association of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO) should be set up as an international umbrella for organisations engaged in the support and promotion of appropriate technology in humanities research and teaching.
  2. the role of ADHO will be both to provide an international framework for collaboration and to co-ordinate fund-raising and other activities that need or benefit from a single international focus.
  3. ADHO should aim to develop regional chapters, taking into account the needs, opportunities and benefits that may be involved in particular areas. In some cases it may be appropriate to develop specific programmes of support, e.g. supporting conferences and workshops.
  4. ACH and ALLC will be founding members of ADHO. ACH will be designated the 'North American' chapter of ADHO, and ALLC the 'European' chapter.
  5. Other chapters envisaged include Asia & Pacific, Central Asia, Africa, and South America. Such chapters could be established on the basis of existing membership of ACH and ALLC, or of newly recruited members, or - more likely - both. ALLC membership is relatively strong in Japan, and current ACH and ALLC members in Australia and New Zealand might wish to collaborate in establishing an Asia & Pacific chapter, or work to establish a separate Australia-New Zealand chapter.
  6. members of established chapters would be encouraged to collaborate in the recruitment of members in sufficient numbers to make new chapters viable, with the aim of covering the globe.
  7. Each regional chapter would aim to encompass the whole range of digital humanities activities, and to promote and support initiatives and activities across this range within its region.
  8. In addition to regional chapters, ADHO would also have as members associations or activities that share common interests in promoting digital humanities. For international bodies, membership would be in AHDO directly. For bodies with a regional focus, membership would be in the appropriate regional chapter.

Rationale

The rationale for these recommendations is that ADHO can provide a framework that 'at worst' will make current collaborative ventures more effective, and if it works as intended will provide a context for new initiatives, new types of collaboration, a more coherent identity at international level, and greater mutual support at regional and country level.

Discussion paper (HS)

Membership & Relationships (local; national; international; affiliations)

Recommendations
  1. basic individual membership in ALLC, ACH, or any future regional organizations, by subscription to the ADHO journal (which would be Literary and Linguistic Computing);
  2. the option for individuals who were members of ACH, ALLC, or future regional organizations to become subscribers of TEI (or NINCH, if NINCH decided to offer individual subscriberships) at a discount, and those subscribers would be kept track of by the LLC publisher as part of ADHO consolidated membership services. Such subscribers would receive appropriate discounts on TEI or NINCH conference fees;
  3. basic institutional membership in ADHO through an institutional subscription to LLC, as ALLC now allows. Institutional subscribers to LLC might be offered a discount on membership in TEI and NINCH--say the same $50 that would be offered to institutional members of TEI or NINCH who wished to subscribe to LLC--but billing for TEI or NINCH membership would be the responsibility of TEI or NINCH, not the LLC publisher;
  4. the option for institutional members of TEI and NINCH to get a discounted subscription to LLC (probably the 20% discount listed for the MLA, for example), but TEI and NINCH would keep these membership lists separately, and would do their own billing and renewal, with some appropriate mechanism for notification or verification for the journal publisher;
  5. joint membership in ADHO and STS (or other, future, related organizations) and joint subscription at some discounted rate, as STS now does with ESTS;
  6. student rates and rates for retired or unemployed individuals as they now are for membership in ALLC;
  7. variable subscription rates for individuals and institutions in weaker economies (perhaps using the TEI model, which bases its discounts on the World Bank's classification of world economies, at http://www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/class.htm)
Rationale

One important objective of ADHO as a whole, and of its membership initiatives as well, must be to increase participation, worldwide, in coordinated scholarly societies for humanities computing. Increasing participation means:

  1. increasing the number of regional chapters of ADHO, and providing assistance in recruiting members to those new chapters,
  2. increasing membership in existing chapters,
  3. increasing members' level of activity in regional chapters

At the same time, in order for ADHO to work as an umbrella organization, participation in ADHO must be an automatic consequence of membership in any of its constituent organizations, and if there is a fee for participation in ADHO, it must be included as part of the membership fee of the constituent organization. This implies that:

  1. the members of ADHO itself should be its constituent organizations, not the members of those organizations;
  2. ADHO would provide benefits to its constituent organizations, and where it provides benefits to individuals, it would do so through the member organizations to which they belong.

Discussion paper (JU)

Finances

Recommendations
  1. LLC should be adopted as the print journal of ADHO. It is further proposed that ownership of the journal should remain, for the time being at least, with ALLC as the European regional chapter of ADHO.
  2. the possibility of including electronic publications, additional paper publications, and a range of member services should be be explored with current and potential journal publishers.
  3. membership of ADHO regional chapters should be by subscription to the ADHO publications.
  4. income derived from the publications should be used to pay for centralised ADHO functions according to an agreed protocol or formula; the remaining funds should be disbursed to each regional chapter on a basis proportional to personal and institutional subscription levels in that region.
  5. in addition to the protocol-based funding for centralised ADHO functions, it should be possible for two or more regional chapters to contribute additional funds for centrally organised initiatives or activities, by agreement.
  6. additional sources of income should be explored, on the basis of funding for specific projects, and of other forms of sponsorship, including endowments.
Rationale & implications

Preliminary financial assessments suggest that even with no additional institutional subscriptions, and the addition only of existing ACH members as subscribers to LLC, the proposed funding model is just about sustainable, although the level of centrally funded ADHO activity would have to be very modest.

At the same time, each regional chapter would have considerable incentive to work hard to increase the number of institutional and personal subscriptions in its region, and the potential is there for robust and viable regional chapters and a vigorous core of centrally administered activities.

Discussion paper (HS)

Publications

Recommendations
  1. A joint Publications Committee (PC) be formed to develop and potentially to manage the proposed publication activities on behalf of the relevant organizations. This committee would have representation from each of the member organizations.
  2. The ACH and ALLC merge their journal publications into a suite of three publications: a print journal, an online journal, and a preprint online publication.
  3. The print journal would be based on the LLC, though the PC could recommend a change in title and focus. The editorial board of the LLC would be expanded to include representatives from across the organizations.
  4. A priority of this print publication would be to develop a translations model.
  5. The PC would prepare a Request for Proposals for an online journal, perhaps to be funded from the centrally allocated funds. The Request might need go out after the transition to a common journal once we see what the available budget is. The online journal would not be just an extension of the LLC. It would solicit and publish new and original works.
  6. The preprint publication could be based on CHWP, but would be recast to be branded clearly as a common preprint publication that uses the same publishing technologies used in the online journal and the common Web Site. It would be designed to allow for a seamless transition from preprint to review and publication in print or online. The activities of the preprint publication could be coordinated with other electronic activities (like STOA) so that there might be a network of coordinated preprint activities.
  7. Humanist would continue as is. A common news and announcement system would be developed as part of a common Web Site (see next item) that could evolve out of NINCH-Announce.
  8. The PC prepare a Request for Proposals for a common Web Operation built on technologies that can support the activities desired. The goal would be to have a common Web Operation that can be used by individual organizations for their Web presence. Each of the organizations would be responsible for their own areas while the PC would oversee the common activities.
  9. The PC prepare a detailed book series proposal for the allied organizations.
Rationale

The aims of the ADHO with respect to publications are to provide a framework within which related groups in the general ADHO domain can share publication resources to the greatest extent possible and initiate new publications. The chief goals are:

  1. to create intellectual synergies and increase opportunities for interdisciplinary interaction through shared publications
  2. to avoid conflicts or competition and proliferation of essentially similar, unsustainable publications
  3. to achieve economies of scale in publications and reduce drain on the administrative resources of each group
  4. to improve the quality of the publications in this domain by increasing their international breadth (for instance, by addressing the problems of translation and multilingualism)
  5. to explore the possibilities for electronic publication and exploit appropriate publication technologies. To present the larger community with examples of best practices in electronic publication

Discussion paper (GR)

Conferences

Recommendations
  1. Create a new conference framework for the entire ADHO group, using the existing (revised) ACH/ALLC protocol as a starting point
  2. the group of ADHO members might logically include ALLC, ACH, TEI, NINCH, and the rubric represented by DRH, but there may also be a wider group of existing conferences that wish to be included here; one question to be addressed is the mechansims by which these organizations would retain the appropriate degree of identity and autonomy while benefiting from their involvement within the larger structure.
  3. since many if not all of the ADHO member organisations would have reasons for holding conferences with specific discipline or geographical focus, the new conference framework might result not in a single unified conference, but rather in a set of conferences which were more explicitly coordinated as to time and place, so as to avoid timing conflicts and duplication.
  4. a logical approach would then be to have a large international ADHO conference representing the entire organization, which could move among the various continents represented (as now), supplemented by chapter-based conferences which might exploit disciplinary or geographical specificity.
  5. include provision for internationalization, translation/interpretation and multilingualism
  6. some areas of possible synergy to be exploited: consider coordinating or consolidating the publication of proceedings: share formats and metadata, create a single unified collection of proceedings/abstracts; use a common submission format (and perhaps provide a DTD); publish the calls for papers in a single place and in a common format.
Rationale & discussion

This approach allows for maximum participation at each conference by the ADHO community, and it encourages a new look at the kind of conference and review protocol that is appropriate for this new meta-organization, rather than assuming that the existing arrangements can be tweaked into an appropriate shape.

High priority should be given to addressing the internationalization/multilingualism issue, which has high stakes attached. (See Internationalism & multi-lingualism below.)

Discussion paper (JF)

Activities and initiatives

Recommendations

Each of the items listed, where they already exist in some form, may be modified or extended within the ADHO umbrella. The columns Local/Regional/ADHO are meant to suggest where the main responsibility should be. For rows which are checked in two or three columns these checks may represent different levels or kinds of responsibility.

ÊLocalRegionalADHO
Busa AwardÊÊX
Student prize(s)XXX
Conference support for students/young scholars - e.g. bursariesXXX
Professional mentoringÊXX
Employment register??X
Training: workshopsXXX
Training: materialsXXX
Documentation - e.g. Guides to good practiceÊÊX
ConsultancyXXX
Project supportXXX
Grant-writing supportXXX
Information gatheringÊXX
Information / guidelines on academic courses and teachingÊXX
Development/collection of course materialsÊXX
Promotion / validation of software developmentÊÊX
TEI GuidelinesÊXX
Alliances with related standards initiativesÊÊX
Promotion of ADHO activities to target audiencesXXX
Alliances with relevant associations / organisationsÊXX
Rationale

The proposed activities are based on the current activities of the member organisations. The intention would be for the ADHO framework to be one which encourages and supports new ideas and new initiatives.

Some of the possibilities and practices can be considered as member support, some as promotional activities, and many as having both purposes.

discussion paper (EO)

Internationalism & multi-lingualism

Recommendations
  1. multi-lingual web sites
    • of ADHO
    • of the regional chapters
  2. journal in print
    • foster publication of papers in different languages
    • all papers, i.e. including papers in English, to be preceded by an abstract in at least one language other than the language of composition
    • authors decide in which language the abstract is to appear
    • authors encouraged to write the abstract themselves in a different language
  3. electronic journal
  4. conferences
    • multi-lingual conference sites
    • multi-lingual call for papers
    • to ask for abstracts in at least two languages (one of the languages has to be among the conference languages)
    • both versions of the abstract are to be published on the conference web site (an example is: CLiP 2001 http://www.uni-duisburg.de/FB3/CLiP2001/ )
    • build up list of reviewers who can review papers in languages other than English
    • simultaneous translation if at all possible, and the development of operational and funding models to make this possible to be pursued as a priority
Recommendations for immediate/short-term action
  1. start with sites of associations
    • start with most important documents
    • start with French, German, Italian and Spanish
    • do not do anything about the web sites of past conferences
    • at this stage do not translate documents which are important only for historical reasons
  2. next conference (2004)
    • take advantage of the enlargement of EU
    • topic on multilingualism
    • multilingual conference web site
    • a must is a version of the site in the language of the host country
    • Conference announcement in several languages
    • Conference abstracts in at least two languages
    • Conference presentations in several languages
    • simultaneous translation service if at all possible (investigate ways of getting money from the European Commission)
  3. Scholarly publications in print
    • start asking for abstracts in a different language
  4. Electronic journal
    • multilingual right from the start
    • study ways of making integration with other languages as easy as possible
  5. Outreach activities
    • support initiatives in different countries
    • support CHiME
Rationale

As the key objectives of the ADHO are to create an associational framework that supports the promotion of the scholarly application of advanced technologies in humanities research and teaching as effectively as possible across a wide range of countries and possibly world wide, there is an imperative for ADHO to take seriously the multi-lingual and multi-cultural issues and to develop adequate policies and frameworks. The same goes for the already existing regional chapters as they do not operate in mono-lingual and mono-cultural settings either. Instead, even ACH with its main focus on the US finds itself in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural setting, and the setting in which the ALLC operates is very complex indeed, because of Europe's richness in national languages and cultures, let alone the internal regional diversification in languages and cultures within more or less every European state, arising from both unique and common histories and centuries of migration.

Successful handling of multilingualism is crucial to our credibility as an international scholarly organization, and also to our ability to attract the membership (not just in numbers, but in breadth of constituency) that the organization will need in order to thrive. The goal should be to create an organization within which there are (at a minimum) significantly reduced barriers to scholarly communication, and in which the collaborative atmosphere that has been the hallmark of ACH/ALLC can be extended to speakers of languages other than English.

If we do not act now, there is a substantial danger (the signs are already there), that seperate organisations will be created which respect the linguistic and cultural situation of individual regions (for example the Mediterranean) better than the ALLC and ACH have been able to do up to now and allow people from these regions to comunicate their ideas and acces information in their own languages. This has to be avoided at all costs as it would mean a counterproductive dispersion of energies and resources.

A fundamental attidute shift with respect to languages and cultures is thus necessary in our scientific communities. It has to become important to publish one's ideas and research results in different languages. This does not mean, necessarily, that people have to have their original paper translated. Instead, they can be encouraged to publish their ideas themselves in the different languages they know. This has to be seen as an important contribution to the spreading of ideas and to the building up of knowledge.

discussion paper (EB)

Resp: hs
Date: 14may03
Notes: