DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly

DHQ Code of Ethics

DHQ is an open-access journal published by the Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, both of which are international professional organizations with strong commitments to multiculturalism, diversity, and inclusion. DHQ takes publication ethics seriously, and is aware that traditional codes of ethical conduct for scholarly journals may need to be extended and reinterpreted in light of new digital methods and contexts for scholarly communication. DHQ deals with a diverse community of authors and recognizes that academic norms and practices are culturally specific. DHQ therefore seeks to identify potential excellence wherever it may be found and to help authors realize the potential of their work for the DHQ audience, rather than acting as a gatekeeper

DHQ Position on Impartiality and Diversity

DHQ operates all of its publication practices without discrimination against authors on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, academic or professional status, age, ability, or any other factor not pertaining to the quality of the submission. We periodically monitor these aspects of our submission and acceptance rates to gather information about whether and how factors within (or outside of) the journal’s control may be creating or reinforcing specific inequities.

DHQ Position on Plagiarism

DHQ maintains the highest level of academic quality, and that includes requiring that all research ideas be credited with integrity. All sources should be acknowledged using conventional academic citation practices. We take all accusations of plagiarism seriously. Allegations of plagiarism in a published article should be sent to the editor in chief (editors@digitalhumanities.org). DHQ will first contact the author and request an explanation, and if necessary will mediate a discussion between the author and the complainant. In cases of inadvertent plagiarism where the author was acting in good faith, a revised version of the article will be published that corrects the error. If DHQ determines that deliberate plagiarism has been committed, the author will be given the choice of withdrawing the article or of publishing a revised version with an acknowledgement and apology. If plagiarism is discovered during the review process, DHQ follows the procedures outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics. (Please see complaint procedure, below).

DHQ Position on Peer Review

DHQ operates a double blind peer review procedure: the reviewing system does not reveal the identity of authors and reviewers to each other. However, DHQ does not take steps to anonymize the submissions themselves (e.g to redact names or other identifying references), although authors are free to do so. For this reason, given the close-knit nature of some domains within the DH community, in some cases reviewers may be able to guess the identity of the author(s). Peer review feedback is not treated as a vote for or against the submission, but rather as a contribution to an informed discussion of the submission’s merits, which is synthesized by the editorial team before making a decision about acceptance.

Reviewers are chosen for their expertise by the editorial team. Conflicts of interest are identified and avoided both through monitoring by the editorial team, and in instructions to reviewers. We value peer review and our peer reviewers, and we strive to provide appropriate acknowledgement (e.g. via a certificate, if requested, for use in tenure files and other applications if necessary) within the constraints of the blind peer review process.

Internal conduct within DHQ

The DHQ Editorial Board contributes input when requested in a timely way. The editorial board meets periodically to discuss all aspects of the journal’s performance, including the issues covered within this document.

The General Editors of DHQ involve relevant parts of the team in decision-making, and communicate effectively. Decision making is done in a transparent manner, with information shared widely with relevant members of the team.

We respect the contribution of time by peer reviewers and try not to overburden them with requests. Peer reviewers should strive to fulfill their reviewing commitments within the time frame set out by the editorial team. If a delay is unavoidable they will take steps to inform the managing editors so that another reviewer can be assigned if necessary.

DHQ Position on Fair Submission and Publication Process

DHQ makes every effort to provide authors with a timely process, within the constraints of our staffing and resources. This process is set out to authors when submissions are received to the journal. DHQ acts to ensure that there is no unfairness or favoritism in the submission or publication process: delay may be unavoidable but no submissions are given special privilege. Accidental delays are remedied as soon as possible.

DHQ Position on Mentoring

In keeping with its recognition of the diversity of academic norms and practices within global digital humanities, DHQ supports authors and provides mentoring to help bridge barriers of language, access, and training.

DHQ Position on Fair Credit and Collaboration

We encourage authors to provide equitable acknowledgement of research collaborators and contributors to projects that are the subject of DHQ articles. While it is up to the individual project as to whether contributors are named as co-authors or in the acknowledgements, we recommend the Faircite practices of extending authorship credit to all team members who have worked on a project from which the research stems.

DHQ Position on Respectful Community

All communication between the DHQ editorial staff, authors, and reviewers is conducted in a spirit of respect and constructiveness. Any comment made on articles by any member of the DHQ community should be constructive. Abusive or derogatory statements are not tolerated. We provide specific guidance to peer reviewers on how to undertake effective reviews. Review language should be constructive and respectful. No demeaning or personal comments will be tolerated in peer review; they will be redacted from feedback to authors if they appear, and reviewers who repeatedly violate these guidelines will be removed from the reviewer pool.

DHQ Position on Hate speech and Defamation

DHQ does not publish pieces that discuss interpersonal grievances or violate confidentiality; DHQ is for public professional communication.

DHQ does not publish pieces that contain or endorse hate speech or defamation, except as examples used to make an appropriate scholarly argument.

DHQ does not publish pieces that contain potentially libellous or slanderous content.

The Editorial Board of DHQ reserve the right to make judgements on whether content can be construed as hate speech, defamatory, libelous, slanderous, or otherwise problematic.

DHQ Position on Responsibility and Production Quality

DHQ is responsible for long-term curation and sustainability of the journal’s content. Should DHQ cease to publish, this responsibility reverts to ADHO.

The DHQ editorial team are responsible for producing high quality of data, and for copyediting journal content.

DHQ authors are responsible for the accuracy of their work, for crediting all sources adequately, for fairly including collaborators in author lists, acknowledgements, and the publishing process, and for final review and sign off of journal articles. DHQ does not have the resources to conduct systematic fact-checking. Authors are responsible for the content of their articles.

DHQ authors are responsible for securing cultural and intellectual property permissions. DHQ expects authors to respect community cultural property traditions. Special care should be taken in cases involving indigenous communities.

DHQ will fix errors in a timely fashion when they are reported to us, as described below, and we will undertake appropriate measures to discover and fix errors and inconsistencies in published work. DHQ also provides a mechanism (via commenting on individual articles) for community discussion of substantive points that are not simply matters of error.

DHQ Complaint Procedure

DHQ provides public mechanisms for making complaints and reporting errors and will respond via email in a timely fashion to any complaints concerning the journal, including content, data, publication ethics, etc., in a timely way. Both the journal and ADHO take all complaints seriously and encourage dialogue between readers, authors, and the editorial board when any aspect of behaviour or publication to DHQ is found not to maintain the standards set out in this document. Contact information is provided in a public facing manner on our website. Complaints should be made via email to the addresses given below.

Specific types of complaints may be addressed to particular parts of DHQ:

  • General error reporting, including typos, should be made to dhqinfo@digitalhumanities.org
  • Any complaints or concerns from authors about a specific piece should be referred to the managing editors at submissions@digitalhumanities.org.
  • Complaints from reviewers should be sent to the DHQ Editor in chief: editors@digitalhumanities.org.
  • There is a comments feature provided on each article for public discussion. Comments should only be used to engage the content of the article in a manner that is relevant to the DHQ readership. Complaints from readers to the author should be made to the author’s personal email, which is given at the head of the article.
  • Complaints of a serious nature, including plagiarism, etc, should be sent to the DHQ editor in chief (editors@digitalhumanities.org).
  • If you are not happy with the way your complaint has been addressed by DHQ, reports and appeal can be made to the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisation’s Publication Committee or Publication Officer.

Revision of DHQ Code of Ethics

This policy shall be reviewed annually by the DHQ General Editors and Editorial Board, and any changes made by agreement with the DHQ Editorial Board. Date of last revision: 5 May 2017