A Free Online Journal for the ADHO Community

Following the direction marked out in the desiderata for ADHO, during the past year the ADHO publications committee has begun the planning for a new, free, online journal. A draft prospectus is available at http://www.digitalhumanities.org/adho/publications/prospectus.html. This brief note summarizes some of the most important goals that have been set for the journal, and indicates some points which still remain to be decided, and on which we welcome discussion and input from the ACH and ALLC executive boards.

The main principles guiding the journal's establishment are as follows:

• it should complement, rather than compete with, the existing journals in digital humanities, and in particular LLC, since the health of ADHO depends on the health of LLC. The editors of the new journal will work closely with the editors of LLC to explore specific collaborative opportunities, as well as to share information and ensure that the most appropriate content goes to each.

• it should emphasize materials that cannot be as easily or appropriately published in print: articles that make significant use of multimedia, interactivity, or other digital features. Similarly, it should provide features that are uniquely part of the digital landscape: blogs, reader commentary, and similar features.

• it should aim to accommodate a highly multilingual audience as soon and as much as possible. This will be necessarily constrained by resources but we consider this a very high priority both for fundraising and for volunteer recruiting.

• its technical infrastructure should be based on open standards and open-source software.

The Publications Committee has selected Julia Flanders as the first editor-in-chief of the journal, and she is now working with the committee to identify the rest of the editorial team. She will also work closely with the editor of LLC during the further planning of the journal to ensure good coordination between the two from the start.

Some points which are still under discussion and on which the publications committee seeks input from the ACH and ALLC executives:

• the intellectual property status of materials published in the journal. Should the copyright simply reside with the author, giving the journal a perpetual non-exclusive right to publish? Should we consider something closer to a GPL license? To what extent do we want to explore alternatives to standard copyright practices?

• how to handle multilinguality, both in reviewing and in publishing. Specifically, what is the most effective way to use scarce resources to maximize the benefit both to the digital humanities community generally, and to speakers of languages other than English? Would it be best to focus on having abstracts in several different languages, for every article? or to have all articles in one other language? To what extent can we offer to review papers in languages other than English, so as to give all papers a fair review process? What are possible funding sources for this aspect of the journal?

• what is a reasonable budget for ADHO to commit to this effort?

A rough timetable for the journal's development is as follows:

June 2005: Announcement of the new journal at ACH/ALLC 2005 in Victoria.

Summer 2005: assemble editorial team and peer reviewers; establish technical infrastructure and workflow; begin soliciting submissions

Fall 2005: start review process for first set of submissions

Winter 2006: first peer-reviewed articles published

Thank you for your comments!

-- Adho.JuliaFlanders - 09 Jun 2005