Abstract: As a growing research field, digital humanities (DH) is receiving increasing attention from quantitative science studies using standardized scholarly databases. However, one of the challenges of this new line of research is how to select the query strategy to produce a representative sample of the field. In this research, we analyzed the differences between two publication samples acquired from the Dimensions database using two sampling approaches, namely, a keyword search and a DH journal list. We argue that these two samples offer distinct perspectives on the conceptual landscape of digital humanities, namely, implicit DH and explicit DH, and contribute to building a more comprehensive representation of the DH research domain. We identified notable differences between the publication samples from these two query strategies, especially the fact that these two samples have a very small overlap of publications, and they also have different disciplinary orientations. Our findings indicate that future quantitative studies analyzing DH publications should use more inclusive methods to cover both the implicit and explicit types of DH contributions. Moreover, we also discussed how our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the disciplinary composition of DH, an interdisciplinary research field.

Abstract: Inscriptions are defined as traces of scientific research production that are embodied in material artifacts and media, which encompass a wide variety of non-verbal forms such as graphs, diagrams, and tables. Inscription serves as a fundamental rhetorical device in research outputs and practices. As many inscriptions are deeply rooted in a scientific research paradigm, they can be used to evaluate the level of scientificity of a scientific field. This is specifically helpful to understand the relationships between research traditions in digital humanities (DH), a highly cross-disciplinary between various humanities and scientific traditions. This paper presents a quantitative, community-focused examination of how inscriptions are used in English-language research articles in DH journals. We randomly selected 252 articles published between 2011 and 2020 from a representative DH journal list, and manually classified the inscriptions and author domains in these publications. We found that inscriptions have been increasingly used during the past decade, and their uses are more intensive in publications led by STEM authors comparing to other domains. This study offers a timely survey of the disciplinary landscape of DH from the perspective of inscriptions and sheds light on how different research approaches collaborate and combat in the field of DH.

Abstract: This paper presents an exploratory research project that investigates data practices in digital history research. Emerging from the 1950s and ‘60s in the United States, digital history remains a charged topic among historians, requiring a new research paradigm that includes new concepts and methodologies, an intensive degree of interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, and international collaboration, and experimental forms of research sharing, publishing, and evaluation. Using mixed methods of interviews and questionnaire, we identified data challenges in digital history research practices from three perspectives: ontology (e.g., the notion of data in historical research); workflow (e.g., data collection, processing, preservation, presentation and sharing); and challenges. Extending from the results, we also provide a critical discussion of the state-of-art in digital history research, particularly in respect of metadata, data sharing, digital history training, collaboration, as well as the transformation of librarians’ roles in digital history projects. We conclude with provisional recommendations of better data practices for participants in digital history, from the perspective of library and information science.