In an attempt to get caught up on the masses of journals I am behind on, I read over Joseph Raben’s “Tenure, Promotion and Digital Publication” at DHQ last night. Raben’s article is right on target with the concerns that I’ve been having about where, as a doctoral student, to begin seeking publication.Raben explains the problem with underlying issue with digital publication for any potential contributer with their eye on tenure and, in my opinion, nails this problem directly:

Underlying the status of online publication as an inferior medium is probably the concern on the part of potential contributors that appearance in electronic media is not as highly regarded by the gatekeepers of tenure and promotion as the traditional hard-bound book and the article offprint, at least in the humanities.

As a doctoral student, I can say that Raben is right on target with this assumption. When graduate advisors provide advice to their unpublished students on how and where to seek publication and presentation, they often provide one very simplistic piece of advice. As emerging scholars, we should seek out publication anywhere we think we have a chance. We should consider the fact that it takes approximately three presentations (preferably at a regional or national conference) to equal one good publication. Now, advisors are clear that “good” publications come in the form of journals that are tangible to the reader (PMLA, for example). We are frequently steered away from the digital publications because they are “too new” and are considered “dangerous” or “careless publications.” Why? Well, as Raben puts it, they don’t know how to measure digital publications:

Books and print articles have been the stairs leading to the tenure, promotion, higher salaries and reduced teaching loads that are the system’s rewards for scholarly industry. When deans and even chairs are incapable of evaluating the content of such publications, they have been able to rely on the number of a candidate’s publications, their substance, the prestige of their publishers and (to a limited extent in the humanities) the number of times they are cited elsewhere.

Now, if the equation that I was provided for measuring publication (1 journal publication = 3 conference presentations) holds true, it seems that this formula becomes complicated if my vitae includes digital publications (x digital publications = 1 journal publication = 3 conference presentations). Unfortunately, nobody has given a value for “x,” so the equation remains unsolved. Unfortunately, this places tomorrow’s tenured faculty in a serious conundrum.

If, as graduate students, we steer clear of digital publications, strive for regional and national conferences, and desperately attempt to publish in PMLA, we will be considered successful in today’s tenure guidelines. However, we are not seeking tenure today; we are seeking tenure in the next decade. By then, I think that it is safe to say, digital journals will have a more solid standpoint in the vitae world. At the very least, tenure and promotion committees wil have the chance to fill in the missing value of “x” in their equation.

So, this leaves those of us with sparse publications in a catch-22. We can continue to follow the advice our advisors are providing and avoid digital publications, or we can make an attempt at this medium while it is in its infancy. We, as the future tenured professors of the world, have the chance to begin making a difference in the acceptability of digital media by submitting to these journals in their infancy. Now, the way I see it in the next decade, when we’re coming up for tenure, we have the chance to look like those who broke the mold, or we have the chance to look like those who follow the pack. Personally, I want to be a mold-breaker. The way I see it, we have guidelines for evaluating e-journals–we teach these evaluative criteria to our students–and we can use these criteria to determine exactly which journals we submit to. Is it really that hard to tell which journals will be seen as the ones with credibility? I don’t think so. It just requires us to keep up with a few of the issues and look at what they publish and who they choose to peer-review the journal. Don’t we do that with the print publications we submit to? I know I’m not sending an article on blogging in First Year Composition to Glamour, so why would I send it to the e-version of Glamour?

All in all, it comes down to us having the ability to use our own judgment to determine what and when we submit to. When it comes down to print vs. digital journals, I still believe that the number of print publications should outweigh the number of digital publications, but that does not mean we should simply ignore the idea of digital publications.

Let me leave you with a potential formula for the tenure committees to consider:

3 digital publications = 1 print publication = 3 conferences.

After all, are we not trying for each of these various forms of publication? While we should not have a vitae full of digital journals, we can have a few listed in our publications. We have years to go before tenure anyway.