Reviewing Digital Scholarship: The Need for Discipline-Based Peer Review

Digital scholarship connects scholarly research to students and the public in nontraditional ways. Authors present research in a digital form, which may include links to primary source material and teaching guides. In this format, design and accessibility are important, and unfortunately, those quick to dismiss all digital work as teaching or outreach can overlook the research element. The confusion over what digital scholarship is and how to evaluate it raises questions that can affect promotion and tenure decisions in academic institutions. This paper will examine issues surrounding the availability of peer review for digital scholarship, especially in the field of American History. Mechanisms for peer review must be created by scholarly associations and applied to digital scholarship to ensure that this form of scholarship is acknowledged and rewarded