In this age of technology and breaking molds, the options below offer alternatives to the traditional printed long-form monograph or journal article. They provide new approaches to how we communicate scholarship in the humanities and allow humanities scholarship to reach a larger audience.
Open Access Publishing
Open access publishing allows for much broader dissemination of scholarly works in the humanities by making the works available for free to anyone with Internet access. Read more in Martin Paul Eve's book, Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future (also available in an open access edition).
Open Library of the Humanities
Supported by a consortium of libraries, the Open Library of the Humanities publishes open access humanities scholarship without article processing charges for the author.
Knowledge Unlatched
Knowledge Unlatched provides funding so that selected monographs in the humanities and social sciences can be made available with a Creative Commons license as a fully downloadable PDF. Libraries from around the world, including the Georgetown University Library, provide support to make this project possible.
Digital Humanities
Digital humanities is a broad term, encompassing a wide variety of projects that combine digital technologies with research, scholarship, and teaching in the humanities. For an overview of creating and implementing digital humanities projects, read Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web (also available in a free online edition).
Digital Humanities (book)
Crisis of the Humanities? Not at all, these authors claim. Right now, instead, they suggest that we are in a time of shift for the humanities, when design and digitization can reshape how we see the humanities and how we see the world. An open access edition of this MIT Press book is also available.
Debates in the Digital Humanities (book)
This book brings explores the theories, methods, and practices of digital humanities and seeks to clarify its multiple possibilities and tensions. An open access hybrid print/digital publication is also available that will explore new debates as they emerge.
Five Fascinating Digital History Projects We Loved in 2016, Five Digital History Projects That Dazzled Us in 2015, Five More Digital History Projects We Loved in 2015. These blog posts also provide links to the 2013 and 2014 lists of interesting digital projects. From Slate magazine, descriptions of innovative digital history sites, including Six Degrees of Francis Bacon (on the 2015 list), a project developed by scholars at Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown Universities.
Technology Is Taking Over English Departments: The False Promise of the Digital Humanities
In this New Republic article, the author describes the wide range of activities that are considered digital humanities. He urges humanists to resist and critique digital humanities momentum rather than embrace it.
Office of Digital Humanities (NEH)
The Office of Digital Humanities offers grant programs, including grants that fund projects that explore how to harness new technology for humanities research as well as those that study digital culture from a humanistic perspective.
Digital Humanities Research Guide
UCLA Library's research guide has extensive links to background information, projects, publications, and organizations associated with digital humanities.
Programs, Reports, and Projects
NEH Public Scholar Program (Grant Program)
The Public Scholar Program supports well-researched books in the humanities intended to reach a broad readership. The program represents NEH's long-term commitment to encourage scholarship in the humanities for general audiences.
Stanford University Press Awarded $1.2 Million for the Publishing of Interactive Scholarly Works (Article)The Mellon Foundation awarded funding to Stanford University Press to pursue digital publication of interactive scholarship, which may be the next frontier in publishing.
Short-Form Monographs (Article)
This alternative discusses mini-monographs, publications which allow scholars to publish works that are longer than journal articles but shorter than typical monographs. Georgetown University Press publishes Digital Shorts that "liberate scholarship from these 'containers.'"
Report of the MLA Task Force on Doctoral Study in Modern Language and Literature (Report)
This 2014 report recommends changes to doctoral education, including engaging more deeply with technology, reimagining the dissertation, and bringing works to new audiences outside the academy. Examples of reimagined dissertations include a suite of essays on a common theme, web-based projects, and public humanities projects.
Ph.D.s Embrace Alternative Dissertations. The Job Market May Not (Article)
A Columbia PhD candidate submitted a comic book for his dissertation in the humanities - and got it published! But how will alternative dissertations affect candidates’ job placement afterwards? The jury is still out.
Making Comics as Scholarship (Article)
A short review of some other comics that have received attention in the academic world.