Faircite : Towards a Fairer Practice of Citation and Credit in the Humanities

Abstract

Within the digital humanities, there are many approaches to citation. Every discipline handles citation and authorship differently, and within the digital humanities there are wide divergences of practice in the ways that credit is assigned and made visible. However, there is also broad agreement that citation practices need scrutiny and perhaps rethinking. The issue arises with particular force when we consider how to cite digital humanities projects and tools. Standard citation practices do not provide good precedents for making visible the contributions of project personnel in these highly collaborative efforts. There has been significant informal discussion and debate in recent years concerning appropriate ways to credit this work, but no consensus has been reached. FairCite (http://faircite.wordpress.com) was founded to promote this discussion and encourage it towards practical, public outcomes.