The PARTHENOS e-Humanities and e-Heritage Webinar Series started off successfully last week with the first webinar on Impact. With fifty participants from all over Europe, Australia, South Africa and the United States, it was fully booked. This hour long webinar was conducted by Juliane Stiller from the Humboldt University Berlin and Klaus Thoden from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and moderated by Ulrike Wuttke of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam.
The webinar started with a short introduction on how the so called digital turn has transformed every aspect of the research life cycle, such as how you publish, collaborate or disseminate results. Especially in the Humanities, there is a shift to more collaborative research. The digital turn also has an effect on how we measure impact. Much more criteria are available than the classical journal impact factor, for example social media statistics, data downloads, or webpage reviews.
During the webinar, several surveys were presented to the participants. The first one asked the attendants: How do you publish your research? It turned out that a presentation was most popular, followed by conference papers, monographs, and the more modern blog post. The digital age challenges you to explore new ways of publishing. By making your research available on the Internet, you can increase the impact level. Whereas a printed book is an output island, on the web, you can share.
Understanding impact and the areas in which you can have impact will increase visibility and transparency of your research results. It will enable you to communicate benefits of your research to other researchers and the general public, funding agencies, and other stakeholders, and at the same time strengthen the influence of digital research in the Humanities in general. A good tool to increase your impact is the DARIAH Impactomatrix: an interactive website that gives you the possibility to explore areas to boost the impact of your digital tools and infrastructure components.
The webinar was concluded with three takeaway messages:
- How, when and what we publish changes
- New and enhances publication forms require new dissemination strategies
- Understanding the impact of your research output will increase your visibility and success.
After the presentation by Juliane and Klaus there was ample time for questions. Participants could use the chat for this while Juliane and Klaus answered. The webinar materials will be made available as soon as possible.
Digital Humanities, e-Heritage and the role of research infrastructures inspire a lot of interest. This first webinar in the PARTHENOS series proved that this format is a good and informative way to reach a dedicated audience. For more webinars in the PARTHENOS series, please visit the Webinar site.