C21 Editions: Editing and Publishing in the Digital Age
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Sheffield
Department Name: Humanities Research Institute
Abstract
C21 Editions proposes to explore and make a direct contribution to the future of digital scholarly editing and digital publishing. When academics mention "scholarly editions", they are typically referring to expertly curated textual resources or collections, designed to bring some sense of order or meaning to a particular set of materials. Scholarly editing, and the publishing practices that bring such efforts to the public, are hugely important to culture and society, providing the artifacts and insights necessary for understanding ourselves and the past, present, and future of the world around us.
One of the major achievements of the digital humanities is the role its community has played in bringing scholarly editions to digital and web-based platforms, improving their research, pedagogical, and societal value through greater dissemination and access. However, despite all that has been achieved in the three or so decades since DH emerged, the digital scholarly edition is now in danger of becoming obsolete in an increasingly digital world. Most existing digital editions and publishing platforms mimic the structure of books, presenting static content in a page-based structure. Where some interactivity does exist, it is usually in the form of basic hyperlinks to other resources. It is quite possible that very soon, many digital scholarly editions will have been reduced to a curio of the early web.
When we look at the practice of digital scholarly editing, there is a marked lack of machine learning techniques designed to support the curation and analysis of cultural materials. There is also a marked lack of consensus and technical guidance on how best to preserve and share born-digital materials essential to our understanding culture and society in the twenty-first century. For example, it is reasonable to expect that future historians and the general public will want a critically curated edition of the former President Donald Trump's tweets, contextualised using the sea of online political, media and social discourse that his messages either responded to or prompted. However, right now, there is now readily available framework or platform for creating, presenting, and sustaining such an edition.
This is precisely was C21 Editions aims to remedy: by engaging with experts and stakeholder groups, the project will establish the methods and principles for developing the scholarly digital editions of the future.
Furthermore, it will demonstrate and support the realisation of such future editions by producing two high impact digital editions based on materials which are currently unpublished. Both editions will be used to help develop and test the project's proposed data standard for encoding born-digital texts and a toolkit for machine-assisted editing. The two editions, data standard and toolkit will be developed in conjunction with public bodies such as the National Library of Ireland and made freely available to other scholars and institutions.
In essence, C21 Editions will operate as a response to Joris van Zundert, who calls on theorists and practitioners to "intensify the methodological discourse" necessary to "implement a form of hypertext that truly represents textual fluidity and text relations in a scholarly viable and computational tractable manner". He warns that, without that dialogue, "we relegate the raison d'etre for the digital scholarly edition to that of a mere medium shift, we limit its expressiveness to that of print text, and we fail to explore the computational potential for digital text representation, analysis and interaction."
One of the major achievements of the digital humanities is the role its community has played in bringing scholarly editions to digital and web-based platforms, improving their research, pedagogical, and societal value through greater dissemination and access. However, despite all that has been achieved in the three or so decades since DH emerged, the digital scholarly edition is now in danger of becoming obsolete in an increasingly digital world. Most existing digital editions and publishing platforms mimic the structure of books, presenting static content in a page-based structure. Where some interactivity does exist, it is usually in the form of basic hyperlinks to other resources. It is quite possible that very soon, many digital scholarly editions will have been reduced to a curio of the early web.
When we look at the practice of digital scholarly editing, there is a marked lack of machine learning techniques designed to support the curation and analysis of cultural materials. There is also a marked lack of consensus and technical guidance on how best to preserve and share born-digital materials essential to our understanding culture and society in the twenty-first century. For example, it is reasonable to expect that future historians and the general public will want a critically curated edition of the former President Donald Trump's tweets, contextualised using the sea of online political, media and social discourse that his messages either responded to or prompted. However, right now, there is now readily available framework or platform for creating, presenting, and sustaining such an edition.
This is precisely was C21 Editions aims to remedy: by engaging with experts and stakeholder groups, the project will establish the methods and principles for developing the scholarly digital editions of the future.
Furthermore, it will demonstrate and support the realisation of such future editions by producing two high impact digital editions based on materials which are currently unpublished. Both editions will be used to help develop and test the project's proposed data standard for encoding born-digital texts and a toolkit for machine-assisted editing. The two editions, data standard and toolkit will be developed in conjunction with public bodies such as the National Library of Ireland and made freely available to other scholars and institutions.
In essence, C21 Editions will operate as a response to Joris van Zundert, who calls on theorists and practitioners to "intensify the methodological discourse" necessary to "implement a form of hypertext that truly represents textual fluidity and text relations in a scholarly viable and computational tractable manner". He warns that, without that dialogue, "we relegate the raison d'etre for the digital scholarly edition to that of a mere medium shift, we limit its expressiveness to that of print text, and we fail to explore the computational potential for digital text representation, analysis and interaction."
Organisations
Publications

Kurzmeier M
(2023)
A Quantitative Analysis of Digital Scholarly Editions

Kurzmeier M
(2023)
A Quantitative Analysis of Digital Scholarly Editions

Kurzmeier M
(2023)
A Quantitative Analysis of Digital Scholarly Editions

Kurzmeier M
(2022)
Visualizing Digital Scholarly Editions

Kurzmeier M
(2023)
Building a digital edition from archived social media content

Kurzmeier M
(2023)
Building a digital edition from archived social media content

Kurzmeier M
(2022)
Visualising the Catalogues of Digital Editions (forthcoming)
in Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts

Kurzmeier M
(2023)
A Quantitative Analysis of Digital Scholarly Editions

O'Sullivan J
(2023)
The born-digital in future digital scholarly editing and publishing
in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

O'Sullivan, J.
(2024)
Twenty-First Century Digital Editing and Publishing
Description | Whereas the project's original objectives were to explore the role of AI in scholarly editing, we have also discovered that the process of editing, when presented as a student learning activity, is an important tool for supporting students' critical engagement with generative AI. |
Exploitation Route | too early to say |
Sectors | Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
Title | 50 Interviews with Experts in Digital Scholarly Editing and Publishing |
Description | The dataset consists of 50 one-hour semi-structured interviews with experts and leading practitioners in digital scholarly editing and publishing. The interviews were audio recorded and then transcribed. The questions focused on the trends, approaches, challenges, and future of scholarly digital editing and publishing in order to establish the landscape for our project's area of study. The transcriptions are currently being reviewed and approved by the interviewees for public release on the DHI Data Service (https://www.dhi.ac.uk/data/c21editions). As of 15th March 2023, 30 interviews have been released to the public. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | The dataset informed our forthcoming publications on the landscape of digital scholarly editing and publishing. It has also informed our approach to the workshops and -- significantly -- our design work for the project's planned prototypes. |
URL | https://www.dhi.ac.uk/data/c21editions |
Title | Interviews on the future of digital editing and publishing |
Description | Transcriptions of 46 interviews with theorists and practitioners in the field of digital scholarly editing on topics relating to the future of digital scholarly editions |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
URL | https://zenodo.org/record/8030085 |
Title | Prototype XML Schema for Including Social Media Content in TEI Encoded Editions |
Description | A prototype XML schema has been developed that enables social media posts from platforms such as Twitter and instagram to be described using TEI-compliant tags. The schema is in the form of a DTD (Document Type Definition). A forthcoming toolkit of technical documentation, guidance, recommendations (technical, editorial, legal) and examples, including the schema, will be made publicly accessible in early 2023. |
Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | For the project, it enables us to proceed with our first prototype edition. For our target audience (people who create and publish scholarly digital editions) it is the first attempt to facilitate the inclusion of social media content in scholarly digital editions. It should serve as a catalyst for further debate and revisions to the schema, and facilitate the wider adoption of social media content as sources when developing editions. |
Description | 13 th International Conference on Middle English, University of Malaga (Whittle): C21 Editions: Working alongside AI to produce an edition of The Pardoner's Tale, 10th May 2024 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | 13th International Conference on Middle English, University of Malaga (Whittle): C21 Editions: Working alongside AI to produce an edition of The Pardoner's Tale, 10th May 2024 |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
Description | A Quantitative Analysis of Digital Scholarly Editions |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | A presentation given at the Digital Humanities Congress, University of Sheffield, in September 2022 to an international audience of academics, digital publishers, archivists/librarians and students interested in digital humanities topics. A key venue for communicating our project to our target audiences. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://www.dhi.ac.uk/dhc/2022/ |
Description | A Quantitative Analysis of Digital Scholarly Editions |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Poster "A Quantitative Analysis of Digital Scholarly Editions" at DHd 2023 Luxembourg (DHd : Open Humanities, Open Culture), March 2023 |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | AHRC-IRC Digital Humanities Workshop on Sustainability and Infrastructure |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Pidd, Michael, and James O'Sullivan, participated in AHRC-IRC Digital Humanities Workshop on Sustainability and Infrastructure, facilitated by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Irish Research Council (IRC), Dec 2022. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Archiving and Publishing Your Work |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | A workshop on digital preservation for artists was undertaken by our PDRA, Dr Michael Kurzmeier, in September 2022 as part of the Cork/San Fran Peer In Programme, a transatlantic professional development programme delivered in partnership with San Francisco Artist Studios and supported by Cork City Council Twinning Cities Grant. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://sample-studios.com/events/cork-san-francisco-peer-in-programme-archiving-and-publishing-your... |
Description | C21 Editions Workshop #1 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | On Tuesday 19th July the project held its first workshop at the University of Glasgow's Advanced Research Centre. The workshop involved six internationally recognised experts in scholarly digital editing, and the project team, coming together to discuss the features, qualities, limitations and opportunities of different approaches to scholarly digital editing and publishing. The focus was on a user-centred design approach, driven by the experts. The outcome was a proposal for a large digital infrastructure for editing which the project team disagreed with (see narrative report). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | DH-AI conference, University of Reading (Whittle): Reimagining The Canterbury Tales for the classroom: A student-led approach to AI edition-making |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | DH-AI conference, University of Reading (Whittle): Reimagining The Canterbury Tales for the classroom: A student-led approach to AI edition-making |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
Description | Digital Scholarly Editions: Past, Present and Future |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | A presentation about the project by Michael Kurzmeier at the Digital Arts & Humanities Research Colloquium, University College Cork, Sept 2022 |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://youtu.be/36pS0PEKwj8 |
Description | International Symposium on the Future of Digital Editing & Publishing, University College Cork (Whittle): GenAI & Chaucer teaching editions: The role of the editor and learning community alongside machine translation |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | International Symposium on the Future of Digital Editing & Publishing, University College Cork (Whittle): GenAI & Chaucer teaching editions: The role of the editor and learning community alongside machine translation, 6 th June 2024 |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
Description | LingLunch, University of Sheffield (Whittle): A digital teaching edition of Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale: The role of the editor, linguist and student alongside AI methods |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | LingLunch, University of Sheffield (Whittle): 'A digital teaching edition of Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale: The role of the editor, linguist and student alongside AI methods', 20th March 2024 |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
Description | Machine Learning, Data and the Humanities T&F group |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Michael Pidd is currently serving on Jisc's Machine Learning, Data and the Humanities task and finish group. The group is composed of experts in AI, Machine Learning, and data science within the domain of digital humanities and the humanities more broadly. The group's purpose is to help Jisc identify where and how it can offer appropriate support, training and services to arts and humanities researchers in the domain of Machine Learning. The group meets regularly to fulfil specific tasks. C21 Editions is concerned with machine-driven approaches to the activity of scholarly editing. Editing is a process undertaken by scholars who have little or no expertise in machine-driven approaches, so the project's input into identifying possible skills development in this area is useful for Jisc. The group is ongoing. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Making archived social media data accessible for research |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Kurzmeier, Michael, "Making archived social media data accessible for research", School of Computer Science & Information Technology Seminar Series, University College Cork, Mar 2023. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
URL | http://www.cs.ucc.ie/seminars/videos/2023-03-10-Michael-Kurzmeier.mp4 |
Description | Perspectives on the Future of Digital Editions & Publishing |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | A presentation given at Digital Humanities 2022 (DH2022) Tokyo to an international audience of academics, digital publishers, information professionals and students with an interest in digital humanities. This is the premier event for communicating our project to our target audience. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://dh2022.adho.org/ |
Description | SCAI workshop, Sorbonne University (Whittle): AI, Chaucer and The Pardoner's Tale |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | SCAI workshop, Sorbonne University (Whittle): 'AI, Chaucer and The Pardoner's Tale', 8th April 2024 |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
Description | Shared Data Storage Service Pilot |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Kurzmeier, Michael, and Murphy, Órla, participated in the "Shared Data Storage Service Pilot" series of workshops, part of IRLDAT, funded under the National Open Research Forum (NORF). The aim of this initiative is to develop a national shared data storage service for active data, starting with a pilot for diverse research groups, Dec 2022. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | UK-IE annual event, University College Cork (Whittle): Inclusivity in medieval digital edition-making: Reimagining The Canterbury Tales |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | UK-IE annual event, University College Cork (Whittle): Inclusivity in medieval digital edition-making: Reimagining The Canterbury Tales, 5 th June 2024 |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |