Notes from the DHQ production conference call on Friday, May 9, 2008.

Please post any amendments or amplifications.

Present on the call:

Julia Flanders

Melanie Kohnen

Matt Kirschenbaum

Chris Meister

Wendell Piez

Joe Raben

Geoffrey Rockwell

Stefan Sinclair

Melissa Terras

Adriaan van der Weel

1. Topics for Conference calls

We talked about the kinds of topics these conference calls might best address, and about how best to use the time. Ideas included:

• use the calls for contentious issues requiring debate: a chance to discuss things that might be difficult to tackle in email because of the need for more personal interaction. The call could be used to open up issues and state positions; then resolve/make decisions in email

• reports should be timed just before calls rather than during

• it would be ideal to have a portal function that documents ongoing discussion and issues, as well as tracking for workflow (so that editors can see the status of materials at a glance). This latter function will hopefully be emerging soon.

• it was also noted that we may want to look for a conference call service that provides better access from outside the US; we'll monitor how things go and explore options if the current service is unsatisfactory.

2. Reports on upcoming issues:

• current issue (2.1) nearly done; articles are encoded, now being copyedited, final metadata added
• the e-science special issue and the classics special issue are both now in revision; authors have received review notes and are revising their articles. Either one could be next, depending on the timing of when revised materials come back.
• we have materials accepted for a further issue; authors will receive review notes within the next week or two.

Julia noted that we reject very little. We discussed the issue of rejection rate:

• we agreed to defer concern on this during the first years of the journal, when our submission quantities aren't terribly high
• there is also the question of special issues: individual articles from special issues may be harder to reject (although our policies on special issues do permit us to do this)
• we could use web metrics as another approach to assessing quality, rather than rejection rate: count references and links, count comments received, leverage native capabilities of the web 2.0 environment
• MK pointed out that Kari Kraus has proposed that open-access journals furnish authors with a summary of info on how article has been read/cited/etc. so that authors can provide this for promotion/tenure
• SS suggested that we try to harvest some lowhanging fruit for adding DIG links, other Web 2.0 paraphernalia: Wendell and Stefan will follow up with John Walsh about this.

3. Report on upcoming bibliography project:

• this is a project to develop a centralized bibliography for DHQ, to substitute for including a full record of each bibliographical citation in a given DHQ article. With records stored centrally, individual articles need only refer to the central record. This would eliminate duplication and variation of data, and would support much better analysis features (e.g. citation analysis, etc.)

• initial records gleaned from existing DHQ articles, DH conference proceedings, LLC/Text Technology/CHUM/other relevant past issues, any other relevant bibliographies

• future records to be added as part of the DHQ encoding process

• Melanie would work on this in late summer and during the coming academic year

• we would apply for an NEH digital humanities startup grant to fund the infrastructural work: developing the data storage and interface tools

• while this dovetails well with activities now being contemplated by ACH and ADHO, we would proceed on our own (cooperatively if possible) rather than trying to make this a larger project and risking having it stall

A number of further ideas came up in the discussion:

• GR notes the importance of process: use a "stub" model so that any updates to the core data are always reflected accurately, rather than having full bibliographic information propagated into each article (which might require updating if the central record changed)
• SS and MK noted the relevance of Zotero as a connection here: they're going towards server-side approach (?)--worth connecting with them. People would be able to share their individual Zotero libraries. We should connect with Dan Cohen concerning formats and interchange, and should collaborate with Zotero on writing the proposal
• NB Stefan's facebook plugin (which he posted to the list about already)
• NB Zotero "connections person" (Trevor Owen; Matt K knows him)
• possible meeting with Wendell, Matt, Trevor in Virginia to do some initial planning

4. DH 2008 Conference

• we talked about how best to recruit articles: important not just to talk to the author and let them know we're interested, but also to follow up.

• to this end, anyone who makes contact with an author should send a note to one of the Articles editors (Matt Kirschenbaum and Adriann van der Weel) so that they can follow up more formally following the conference.

• we agreed it would be a good idea to set up a poster table; Chris Meister will contact Lisa Lena concerning a table at the poster session. Stefan will be manning the ACH jobs table, so if they're close together, he can help to man the DHQ table

5. Geoffrey asked about adding a Tapor Tool Bar on DHQ interface

• we noted that this will involve some input from Michelle Dalmau on how to incorporate it gracefully into the interface
• try this over the summer? GR and WP will coordinate with John Walsh and Michelle Dalmau to see what would be involved

6. Further items for further discussion in a subsequent call

We discussed the issue of hybrid and IM articles: where does this stand? Melissa and Geoffrey suggest that we need to await incoming articles; we'll review them according to regular review procedures

• NB Ruecker article now under consideration
• TRex competition (posted by StÃ? ©fan) is relevant here
• GR observed that a contest approach is promising: positions things as submissions: jury (readers) comments show what's successful

-- JuliaFlanders - 14 May 2008