When it comes to hard data about what they do, policy makers and educators in the humanities have been mostly left out in the cold, forced to rely on isolated statistics that do not give an overview of the field. That changed this month, as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences unveiled the prototype of its long-awaited Humanities Indicators…

Senior scholars, the A-list of academic publishing, seem to submit fewer unsolicited manuscripts to traditional humanities journals than they used to. The journal has become, with very few exceptions, the place where junior and midlevel scholars are placing their work. Technology and changing habits have called into question the nature of the…

Digital-humanities centers have sprung up on many campuses, and the field has already launched many careers--but not always smoothly. A panel at the Modern Language Association conference in December focused on a particular subset of work that the organizers described as "literary geospaces." Two of the featured projects--Janelle…

This paper reports that a large-scale, multinational attempt in Europe to rank humanities journals has set off a revolt. In a protest letter, some journal editors have called it "a dangerous and misguided exercise." The project has also started a drumbeat of alarm in this country, as U.S.-based scholars begin to grasp the implications…

A surprise request for proposals from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a forthcoming report on university publishing in the digital age were among topics discussed at the annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses. The offer from the Mellon Foundation concerns support for collaborative, monograph-centered projects in…

When the American Council of Learned Societies held its annual meeting in Montreal last week, topics such as open access, scholarly publishing, and "The Global Academy and the Geography of Ideas" figured on the agenda. This article discusses the first item of business at the meeting: the debut of the Humanities Indicators project, with a first set…

The Social Science Research Network, an online clearinghouse popular among social scientists, has created a Humanities Research Network (HRN) that is similar. To begin with, the new network will cover three areas--philosophy, classics, and English and American literature--broken down into detailed subcategories. More disciplines will be added in…