[iDC] Not your daddy's academic criteria

[john sobol]

Jon, congratulations on both the Criteria and the recognition  
thereof. Very interesting and potentially important. I strongly hope  
that other institutions will follow.

John

--
www.johnsobol.com



On 9-Apr-09, at 2:13 PM, Jon Ippolito wrote:

> Trebor has broached the reluctance of universities to recognize new
> media research before (http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/16886). I'm
> hoping this new publication will broaden the debate (apologies for
> cross-posting)--jon.
>
> MIT Publishes U-Me's "New Criteria for New Media"
>
> Academia's goal may be the free exchange of ideas, but up to now many
> universities have been wary--if not downright dismissive--of their
> professors using the Internet and other digital media to supercharge
> that exchange, especially in the arts and humanities. Peer review
> committees are supposed to assess a researcher's standing in the
> field, but to date most have ignored reputations established by
> blogging, publishing DVDs, or contributing to email lists.
>
> In a signal that some universities are warming to digital scholarship,
> however, the winter 2009 issue of MIT's Leonardo magazine--itself a
> traditional peer review journal, though known for experimenting with
> networked media--has published a feature on the changing criteria for
> excellence in the Internet age. To make its point as concretely as
> possible, the feature includes the recently approved promotion and
> tenure guidelines of the University of Maine's New Media Department,
> together with an argument for expanding recognition entitled "New
> Criteria for New Media."
>
> Rather than throw time-honored benchmarks for excellence out the
> window, "New Criteria for New Media" tries to extend them into the
> 21st century. To supplement the "closed" peer review process familiar
> from traditional journals, U-Me's criteria recognize the value of the
> "open peer review" employed in recognition metrics such as ThoughtMesh
> and The Pool. As the name suggests, open peer review allows
> contributions from any community member rather than a group of
> experts, and all reviews are public; when combined with an appropriate
> recognition metric, the result is much faster evaluations than
> possible via the customary approach. "New Criteria for New Media" also
> urges academic reviews to reward collaboration in new media research;
> valuable roles include conceptual architect, designer, engineer, or
> even matchmaker (e.g., introducing two other researchers whose
> collaboration results in a publication).
>
> Because the University of Maine hopes other institutions will adopt
> these criteria and adapt them to their own needs, it is releasing them
> under a Creative Commons (CC-by) license. (Due to a misprint by MIT
> Press, the Leonardo article highlights the authors' copyrights rather
> than the CC license; it's surprisingly hard to give things away in a
> print economy!) The new criteria have already been sought after by
> individual tenure candidates and cited in the Chronicle of Higher
> Education. You can find them in Leonardo's winter 2009 issue (vol. 42
> no. 1) or online at these links:
>
> "New Criteria for New Media" (white paper)
> http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/ 
> new_criteria_for_new_media.html
>
> "Promotion and Tenure Guidelines" (sample redefined criteria)
> http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/ 
> promotion_tenure_redefinitions.html
>
> For more information, please email me or the Still Water lab at the
> University of Maine (http://newmedia.umaine.edu/stillwater/).
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