I have found this whole aspect of the workshop very interesting. It strikes me that there may be some rather important differences between the academic environment in Britain and the States or perhaps I've just been lucky with the institutions I have been a part of. At Durham University there seems to be a general respect accorded to online data and online publications, however, these are not included in our Research Assessment Exercise 2008 (RAE). So I have found that the online publications ARE given high levels of academic credit, but that the RAE is a different sort of exercise and that is restrictive. I think the idea of the RAE, however, is that it is meant to be a standard measure which should just be the tip of the iceberg-- in other words, anyone who had only 4 publications for the RAE would be in a lot of trouble. The idea is that everyone submits their best 4 and that it should be require some thought to determine which are the best (there should be many excellent things to choose from). In addition, having satisfied the RAE requirements in terms of four publications people are then able to stand out because of the other things. Simulations and models in particular, are respected but hard to assess in the same exercise as journal articles (which are hard to assess in the same exercise as books-- so it's not impossible for this to happen).

Basically, I have found at Durham that people with computational skills are actively encouraged and rewarded, BUT they must satisfy the RAE requirements as well. So it is true to say that academic staff could produce only journal articles and no simulations, or other computational e-anthropology products and the opposite is not true, but I think those academics who do BOTH are more obviously appreciated and rewarded in my institution than those who do ONLY hardcopy publications.

--Steve Lyon 19-Jun-2007 11:02 BST