Posts Tagged ‘Social sciences’

Weekly Announcements - November 9, 2009

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Here are the latest announcements from SSRN:

Announcing 4 New Sponsored LSN Subject Matter eJournals

We are pleased to announce four new Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) Sponsored Subject Matter eJournals under Law, Brain & Behavior Journals. Law & Evolution, Law & Neuroscience, Law & Prosociality, and Law, Cognition, & Decisionmaking, are sponsored by Indiana University Maurer School of Law and by the UCLA School of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles.

LAW, BRAIN & BEHAVIOR JOURNALS
Law is concerned with organizing and constraining human behavior. As a result, some model of human behavior, implicit or explicit, underlies legal principles and analysis. Papers in LAW, BRAIN & BEHAVIOR employ conceptual and empirical findings from various disciplines, including neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and experimental psychology, to shed light on how we can best understand law and and use it to guide human behavior in desirable directions.

LAW & EVOLUTION
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Law-Evolution.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Law-Evolution

Editor: Jeffrey Evans Stake, Robert A. Lucas Chair of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law

Description: This journal distributes working and accepted paper abstracts with a focus on the intersection of law and evolution in a number of domains. First and foremost, evolutionary psychology and biology provide a model of human behavior that can be helpful in understanding legal rules, critiquing them, and suggesting reforms. Second, understanding the evolution of the biological world is important for constructing legal regimes to address a wide variety of issues, from the environment to medicine. Third, ideas can and often do replicate, becoming “memes,” and their evolution has implications for the law, both because many areas of the law deal with ideas and because laws and legal institutions are themselves evolving replicators. This journal accepts working papers, essays, published articles, experimental and research reports, and other scholarly treatments of topics within the intersection of LAW AND EVOLUTION.

LAW & NEUROSCIENCE
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Law-Neuroscience.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Law-Neuroscience

Editor: Oliver Goodenough, Professor, Vermont Law School, Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Description: This journal distributes working and accepted paper abstracts with a focus on law and the emerging science of the brain sharing a basic preoccupation: understanding the nature of human thought and action. Law has been had an implicit science of mind; cognitive neuroscience is an explicit version. A sustained academic dialog between these disciplines will lead to advances on each side of the conversation. In particular we desire to increase access to, as well as understanding of, human action. By access we mean an actionable pathway to improving human action. Law will be enriched with better models of thought and behavior and with a tool-kit of applications and interventions for such difficult problems as addiction, mental health, and legal procedure itself. Cognitive science will benefit from the challenge of tackling problems whose solutions could have significant consequences for justice and social welfare. The abstracting journal LAW AND NEUROSCIENCE provides a forum for conducting this exchange. It will accept working papers, essays, published articles, experimental and research reports, and other scholarly treatments of topics at the intersection of law, neuroscience and related disciplines, such as cognitive psychology, economics, and behavioral biology.

LAW & PROSOCIALITY
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Law-Prosociality.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Law-Prosociality

Editor: Lynn Stout, Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles - School of Law

Description: This journal distributes working and accepted paper abstracts covering various aspects of the many interactions between law and prosocial behavior. Extensive empirical evidence demonstrates that rather than always maximizing their own material self-interest, people often behave prosocially by sacrificing their own material welfare in order to help, and sometimes in order to harm, other people. For example, people often follow legal rules, obey social norms, and show both trust and trustworthiness, even when external sanctions are weak or absent. Papers in LAW AND PROSOCIALITY use data and evidence gathered from neuroscience, experimental and behavioral economics and psychology, and other life and social sciences to shed light on the empirical phenomenon of prosocial behavior and to examine how prosocial behavior depends on, reinforces, and interacts with law and public policy. Legal scholars, behavioral economists, psychologists, policy experts, and other researchers and scholars are encouraged to submit papers that investigate the empirical phenomenon of prosocial behaviors, including behaviors like trust, altruism, cooperation, and altruistic punishment, and their relation to law and social order.

LAW, COGNITION, & DECISIONMAKING
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Law-Cognition-Decisionmaking.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Law-Cognition-Decisionmaking

Editor: Russell Korobkin, Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles - School of Law

Description: This journal distributes working and accepted paper abstracts at the intersection of research on behavioral decisionmaking and law. Evaluations of existing or potential legal policy require an understanding of how law affects behavior, and an understanding of behavior in turn requires insight into how individuals process information and make decisions. Papers in LAW, COGNITION, and DECISIONMAKING use knowledge of how humans process information to render judgments, form preferences, and make choices for the purpose of informing descriptive and normative analysis of law.

Announcing Expansion of ERN Microeconomics Subject Matter eJournal

We are pleased to announce the expansion of Economics Research Network (ERN) Microeconomics: Information, Specific Knowledge, & Uncertainty into the following eJournals:

MICROECONOMICS: ASYMMETRIC & PRIVATE INFORMATION
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Micro-Asymmetric-Private.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Micro-Asymmetric-Private

Description: This journal distributes working and accepted paper abstracts of empirical and theoretical papers on microeconomic aspects of information including the analysis of decisions in transactions where the costs of information transfer result in one party having different information than the other. Included in this topic are studies in which the cost of transferring or creating information lead to information asymmetries in principal-agent problems. The topics in this journal include topics D82, D83, D86 and D87 from Section D8 of the JEL classification system.

MICROECONOMICS: DECISION-MAKING UNDER RISK & UNCERTAINTY
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Micro-Decision-Making.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Micro-Decision-Making

Description: This journal distributes working and accepted paper abstracts of empirical and theoretical papers on microeconomic aspects of the analysis of economic actors making decisions facing different levels of risk and uncertainty. Included in this topic are models based on probability, and utility theories. The topics in this journal include topics D81 from Section D8 of the JEL classification system.

MICROECONOMICS: SEARCH; LEARNING; INFORMATION COSTS & SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE; EXPECTATION & SPECULATION
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Micro-Search-Learning.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Micro-Search-Learning

Description: This journal distributes working and accepted paper abstracts of empirical and theoretical papers on microeconomic aspects of the role played by the costs of information transfer, learning, and searching, in decision-making under uncertainty and risk. The analysis of the role played by expectations and speculation in reaching decisions in the context of costly information and uncertainty is also included in this topic. The topics in this journal include topics D83 and D84 from Section D8 of the JEL classification system.

Announcing Paris December 2009 Finance International Meeting AFFI - EUROFIDAI on SSRN

In cooperation with the Paris Finance International Meeting AFFI - EUROFIDAI, the Financial Economics Network (FEN) is pleased to announce the Paris December 2009 Finance International Meeting Online Proceedings. These proceedings are available to all users at no charge and contain abstracts of the meeting’s papers with links to the full text within the SSRN eLibrary.

The annual Paris Finance International Meeting is organized by AFFI (French Finance Association) and EUROFIDAI (European Financial Data Institute), and jointly sponsored by CDC Institute for Economic Research, CNRS, Fondation Banque de France pour la Recherche en Economie Monetaire, Financiere et Bancaire and Ministere de l’Enseignement Superieur et de la Recherche and Pôle universitaire Léonard de Vinci.

The latest research in all areas of finance is included in the meeting. Program chair is Patrice Fontaine.

This abstracting eJournal provides a data warehouse for all abstracts and papers presented at the December 2009 Meeting. Abstracts of the papers will also be published in subject-specific journals within FEN and, where appropriate, in the journals of our sister networks.

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Paris-2009-AFFI-EUROFIDAI.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Paris-2009-AFFI-EUROFIDAI
Conference URL: http://www.en.affi.asso.fr/200-december-2009.htm

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Weekly Announcements - October 26, 2009

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Here are the latest announcements from SSRN:

Erasmus Law Review Upgrades Its LSN Partners in Publishing Journal

We are pleased to announce that Erasmus Law Review has upgraded its Partners in Publishing Journal within the Legal Scholarship Network (LSN), which includes, but is not limited to, a customized abstracting eJournal distributed to SSRN subscribers.

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Erasmus-Law-Review.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Erasmus-Law-Review

The Erasmus Law Review seeks to foster independent critical scholarship as relevant to the discipline of law.

The Board of Editors encourages the submission of legally relevant manuscripts by legal scholars and practitioners as well as those versed in other disciplines relevant to law, such as criminology, sociology, political science and economics.

The Erasmus Law Review intends to issue calls for papers on specific topics, topics will be posted on the website of the journal. All articles which the board in principle intends to publish will be submitted to peer-review.

Business History Review Joins MRN Partners in Publishing Journals

We are pleased to announce that the Harvard Business School, Business History Review has joined our Partners in Publishing Journals within the Management Research Network (MRN).

BUSINESS HISTORY REVIEW

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Business-History-Review.html

Business History Review is a quarterly publication of original research by historians, economists, sociologists, and scholars of business administration. BHR’s ongoing mission, from its 1926 inception as the Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, is to encourage and aid the study of the evolution of business in all periods and all countries.

China Academy of Financial Research (CAFR) Joins Finance Research Centers Papers

We are pleased to announce that China Academy of Financial Research (CAFR) has started a Finance Research Centers Papers series within the Financial Economics Network (FEN).

CHINA ACADEMY OF FINANCIAL RESEARCH (CAFR)

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/CAFR-RES.html

CAFR is the China Academy of Financial Research. The role of the CAFR is modeled after the NBER in the US and the CEPR in Europe.

CAFR Research Paper Series aims at promoting high-quality theoretical and applied research in financial economics. The Series also aims at promoting high-quality research on China’s economy and financial markets. The Series features contributions both by CAFR Research Fellows and by a network of external researchers.

Announcing New ERN Research Paper Series Journals

We are pleased to announce that Universidad de los Andes Department of Economics and George Mason University Department of Economics have each started an Economics Departments Research Paper Series; George Mason University School of Public Policy Faculty Research has started an ERN Public Policy Centers Research Paper Series, within the Economics Research Network (ERN).

UNIVERSIDAD DE LOS ANDES DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/U-Andes-Economics.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=U-Andes-Economics

The Documentos CEDE Working Papers Series aims to advance the Department of Economics at Universidad de los Andes as an outstanding center for research on Economics. The series reflects the interest of our faculty on a wide array of economic issues and on applied economic research. Documentos CEDE provides our faculty and students with an opportunity to disseminate their research and exchange ideas with policy makers and the academic community.

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/George-Mason-Economics.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=George-Mason-Economics

The Department of Economics at George Mason University (GMU) is distinguished by its excellence in Austrian economics, experimental economics and public choice. Its intellectual contribution to these fields is exemplified by two Nobel prizes awarded to Mason professors James Buchanan (public choice) and Vernon Smith (experimental economics). Complementing its tradition of academic excellence is the department’s Washington DC location, which leaves it unique in its ability to draw direct attention to its extensive outreach and policy research programs. The Working Paper Series (WPS) aims to further enhance the academic strength of the department by promoting the rapid dissemination of research, facilitate the exchange of ideas with other researchers, and stimulate intellectual exchange and communication throughout the scholarly community.

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY FACULTY RESEARCH

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/GMU-Faculty-PUB.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=GMU-Faculty-PUB

The School of Public Policy (SPP) at George Mason University is at the crossroads - both geographically and intellectually - of government, non-profit organizations and private industry. The SPP Faculty Research Paper Series exhibits a cross-section of the faculty research output. Founded in 1990, today SPP has 70 full-time teaching and research faculty from more than a dozen academic fields, including political science, economics, geography, sociology, anthropology, business, engineering, history, law, medicine, education, and urban planning. Currently offering five Master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in Public Policy, SPP now attracts almost 1,000 students from the U.S. and abroad and has one of the largest doctoral programs in public policy in the US.

Announcing the 2009 IACM Meetings Abstracting eJournal

In cooperation with the International Association for Conflict Management (IACM), the Negotiations Research Network (NEG) is pleased to announce the 2009 IACM Meetings Abstracting eJournal. This abstracting journal is available to all users at no charge and contains abstracts of the meetings papers with links to the full text within the SSRN eLibrary.

You can browse all IACM 2009 Meeting abstracts in the SSRN database by clicking on the following link. There are currently 63 such papers in the system. You may wish to bookmark it in your browser.

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/IACM-2009.html
Conference URL: http://www.iacm-conflict.org

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE
You can subscribe at no cost to the IACM 2009 Meeting abstracting journal by clicking on the following link:

http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=IACM-2009

This link uses browser cookies to store the name of the eJournal while you log in. You will need to enable cookies on your browser to use the link above or to access the SSRN HeadQuarters. If cookies are not enabled, you will not be able to subscribe to SSRN eJournals or to log into the HeadQuarters. If you have any questions please call 877-SSRNHelp (toll free 877.777.6435 within the United States or 00+1+585+4428170 outside of the United States).

Participants of this year’s conference will be subscribed to the abstracting journal. In addition, subscribers to the IACM 2008 Meetings abstracting journal will automatically receive this year’s journal as well.

Stetson University College of Law Joins LSN Research Paper Series

We are pleased to announce that Stetson University College of Law has started a Research Paper Series within the Legal Scholarship Network (LSN).

Stetson University College of Law

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Stetson-U-LEG.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Stetson-U-LEG

Stetson University College of Law, located in Gulfport and Tampa, Florida, is a dynamic scholarly community with a vibrant faculty and student body who strive to have a meaningful and far-reaching impact on the law, the profession, and society. To further this mission, the Stetson University College of Law Legal Studies Research eJournal contains abstracts, works-in-progress, and published articles and essays written by members of the College of Law faculty on a wide variety of legal and law-related topics.

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Weekly Announcements - August 17, 2009

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Here are the latest announcements from SSRN:

Bancaria Joins FEN Partners in Publishing

We are pleased to announce that Bancaria has joined our Partners in Publishing within the Financial Economics Network (FEN).

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Bancaria.html

Bancaria is the journal of the Italian Banking Association published by Bancaria Editrice. Over the last 80 years Bancaria contributed to the awareness and in-depth examination of national and international banking and financial system dynamics. Today it is one of the more acknowledged and widespread Italian financial journals. (View full announcement)

Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging (MEA) Joins ERN Research Paper Series

We are pleased to announce that Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging (MEA) has started a Research Paper Series within the Economics Research Network (ERN).

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Mannheim-RES.html

The Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging (MEA) Research Paper Series focuses on selected micro- and macroeconomic aspects of demographic change. It contains research results from research scientists, doctoral students and visiting scholars at MEA. The papers are published electronically by the institution and available online. (View full announcement)

Journal of CENTRUM Cathedra Joins MRN Partners in Publishing

We are pleased to announce that Journal of CENTRUM Cathedra has joined our Partners in Publishing within the Management Research Network (MRN).

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Journal-of-CENTRUM-Cathedra.html
Subscribe: http://ow.ly/kkxF

The Journal of CENTRUM Cathedra (JCC) is the official academic journal of CENTRUM Catolica, the Business School of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. The mission of the JCC is to disseminate knowledge generated by academic and doctoral research conducted at CENTRUM Catolica and other universities in the areas of global strategic management. (View full announcement)

Announcing 2009 CAAA Annual Conference Abstracting eJournal

In cooperation with the Canadian Academic Accounting Association, the Accounting Research Network (ARN) is pleased to announce the 2009 CAAA Annual Conference Abstracting eJournal. This abstracting eJournal is available to all users at no charge and contains abstracts of the meeting’s papers with links to the full text within the SSRN eLibrary.

The Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA) is an organization of accounting educators, professional accountants, and others who are involved in, or concerned about, research and education in accounting and related areas. The CAAA’s mission is to promote excellence in accounting research and education in Canada. This abstracting eJournal provides a data warehouse for all abstracts and papers presented at the conference. Abstracts of the papers will also be published in subject-specific journals within ARN and, where appropriate, in the journals of our sister networks.

You can browse all 2009 CAAA Annual Conference abstracts in the SSRN database by clicking on the following link. There are currently more than 35 such papers in the system. You may wish to bookmark it in your browser. (View full announcement)

View papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/CAAA-2009.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=CAAA-2009
First Issue: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/sample_issues/1162496_CMBO.html

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Weekly Announcements - August 10, 2009

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Here are the latest announcements from SSRN:

China Economist Joins ERN Partners in Publishing

We are pleased to announce that China Economist has joined our Partners in Publishing within the Economics Research Network (ERN).

CHINA ECONOMIST
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/China-Economist.html

China Economist is an English-language periodical that focuses on economics and business management as well as on other fields of social sciences in China. (View full announcement)

Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Joins ERN Research Paper Series

We are pleased to announce that Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy has started a Public Policy Centers Research Paper Series within the Economics Research Network (ERN).

LEE KUAN YEW SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Lee-Kuan-Yew-PUB.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Lee-Kuan-Yew-PUB

The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy was established in 2004 with the mission of educating and training the next generation of Asian policymakers and leaders. Its objectives are to raise the standards of governance throughout the region, improve the lives of the region’s people and, in so doing, contribute to the transformation of Asia. Throughout Asia, the demand for a first-rate public policy education is growing. The School is thus in the right place at the right time. At the heart of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy’s reputation for excellence lies its faculty - a diverse and growing community of scholars and practitioners well known for teaching and research expertise in a variety of fields. (View full announcement)

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Weekly Announcements - August 3, 2009

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Here is the latest announcement from SSRN:

Announcing EFA 2009 Annual Meeting Abstracting Journal

In cooperation with the European Finance Association (EFA), the Financial Economics Network (FEN) is pleased to announce the 2009 European Finance Association (EFA) Annual Meeting abstracting journal. The abstracting journal is available to all users at no charge and contains abstracts of the meeting papers with links to the full text within the SSRN eLibrary.

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/EFA-2009-Bergen.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=EFA-2009-Bergen
Conference URL: http://www.efa2009.org
Recent Issue: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/sample_issues/1279763_CMBO.html

The European Finance Association (EFA) was founded in 1974 in collaboration with the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) and the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM). The aim of the Association is to provide a professional society for academics and practitioners with an interest in financial management, financial theory and its application. EFA serves as a focal point of communication for its European and international members. It also provides a framework for better dissemination of information and exchange on a global scale.

The Association’s Annual Meeting is one of its main activities. Since 1974, the meetings have been organized each year in different cities all over Europe. They provide the opportunity to present research work in the field of corporate finance, investment, financial markets, money and banking. (View full announcement)

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Engagement Not Enrichment. Imagination Not Incorporation.

Monday, June 15th, 2009

In scholarly research, there are many differences between the practices of the Scientific Technical and Medical (STM) disciplines and the Social Science and Humanities (SS&H) disciplines. According to a report commissioned by the JSTOR, “Scholarly Communications in the Biosciences Discipline,” journal articles are the primary focus of literature searches during research in the STM disciplines. On the contrary, Historians rely on books, and in that matter, primary sources are more important than secondary sources (“Scholarly Communications in the History Discipline: A Report Commissioned by JSTOR.”) Since many of the books and primary literature in the SS&H are not yet digitized, historians have not yet had an incentive to participate in digitization projects. In fact, many have been against digital or virtual libraries sprouting at Universities. For example, when a plan arose to tear down the Meyer Library, holding Stanford’s East Asian Collection, objection came, “Too much of the renowned East Asian collection would be available only by sending a page for a book, critics said. Humanists objected that the model of the sciences did not fit their needs.” Just last week, I was speaking with a large Humanities association about using our Conference Management Services. The major sticking point was how we were to handle their hard copy paper submissions. And this past Spring, Open Access publishing, although widely accepted at such schools such as Harvard and MIT, was voted down in a 37-24 decision during the University of Maryland’s faculty senate:

Senators criticized the proposal for its language, which they said did not accurately characterize the variations that exist between departments. Throughout the debate, science professors faced off against humanities professors - a rift caused by the vast differences between scientific journals and humanities journals.

“This is a proposal that does not take into account the needs of different disciplines,” history professor Gay Gullickson said. “[Open access] applies well to some disciplines and hurts others.” (”Faculty Sens. Battles Over Open Access“)

The STM disciplines are far out running the Humanities in digitizing scholarly literature. However, change is inevitable. Opportunities should not be avoided within the Humanities; they should be embraced. As University of Maryland Arts and Humanities’ Dean James Harris noted:

… libraries are slowly becoming virtual and the university will eventually have to transition with them.

‘This is happening,’ Harris said. ‘The train has left the station.’(”Faculty Sens. Battles Over Open Access“)

If there is one thing we can agree on it is that the humanities disciplines are a vast conglomeration of differing fields, each with their own fairly distinct personality. This variability is part of the Humanities’ greatest strengths. Encompassing a wide variety of fields, opinions, methods and personal backgrounds - it is a mosaic at its finest and a quagmire at its worst. As with the STM disciplines, these variations have allowed each of these fields to flourish. The initial proliferation of various and vibrant digital Humanities projects over the last decade has marked the Humanities’ progressive entrance into the digital world. Unfortunately, these projects and participation within the digital realm have not been widely adopted by the Humanities community. However, it is imperative that those scholars that have a stake in the humanities’ transition into the digital World let their voices and opinions be heard about what this transition should look like.

Eloquently expressed by Johanna Drucker in “Blind Spots: Humanists Must Plan Their Digital Future:”

The question cannot be answered in the abstract. The details that will bedevil this and other schemes for the next age of scholarly work and design of the environments to support it are not trivial. And here I come to the crux of my argument. The design of new environments for performing scholarly work cannot be left to the technical staff and to library professionals. The library is a crucial partner in planning and envisioning the future of preserving, using, even creating scholarly resources. So are the technology professionals. But in an analogy with building construction, they are the architects and the contractors. The creation of archives, analytic tools, and statistical analyses of aggregate data in the humanities (and in some other scholarly fields) requires the combined expertise of technical, professional, and scholarly personnel.

The task of modeling an environment for scholarship (not just individual projects, but an environment, with a suite of tools for access, use, and research activity) is not a responsibility that can be offloaded onto libraries or technical staffs. I cannot say this strongly or clearly enough: The design of digital tools for scholarship is an intellectual responsibility, not a technical task. After all, what will such “research portals” do? What kinds of work will they be designed to support? Editing? Annotation? Aggregation of leaves of manuscripts scattered at remote institutions? Collaborative writing? Close readings? Data mining? Information display? Multimedia writing? Networked conversation? Publishing? Those are enormous questions, to which no scholar would have the same set of answers as another. No scholar would have the same requirements. But creating boutique, custom solutions on a project-by-project basis is not practical, and the labor involved is too costly. The scope of the task ahead is nothing short of modeling scholarly activity anew in digital media. To answer that challenge, humanists have to do more than wave their hands at the technical professionals.

Collaboration is critical in this endeavor. 1,000 different departments searching for 1,000 different solutions will not work. What we need is a dialogue among all potential stake holders, including the early adopters and those late to the party. We (academics, publishers, repositories and other stakeholders) need to work together and find the solutions to the somewhat unique needs of the discipline: what specific software and services do Humanities academics need in a digitized world that will help them accomplish and expand their goals? The conversation needs to be collaborative, but also the Humanities disciplines need to take advantage of the pioneers in the STM and the Social Science disciplines. A lot of disciplines have taken a lot of arrows, and the Humanities should be able to learn from them. Or at least look to see from which directions the arrows came.

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