Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship

Failure is ordinary. From technological failures and computational obsolescence to rejected applications and challenging collaborations, failure is an unavoidable part of any scholarly endeavor. This is especially true for digital scholarship, as the everyday risk of failure is compounded by the challenges of interdisciplinary research and the fragility of digital technology.

Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship brings together a diverse, interdisciplinary, and international group of scholars and practitioners who each offer short personal and professional reflections on the failed, broken, or challenging aspects of scholarly practice. It provides a critical perspective on the ways institutional and material conditions are intractably linked to approaches to digital research and how those conditions differ within and across national contexts.

In creating a critical, constructive, and compassionate vocabulary for failure, this book normalizes failure as an object of inquiry, asking what value exists in failure in digital scholarship and how we can create the space to fail better.