Dear Anne, Toma, and the PC,
Anne and Toma, thank you for all of the hard work you’ve been doing.
I know you have made the decision to accept proposals numerically, but I urge you not to claim that this is “fair”: instead, we are delegating the work of creating the conference
program to the ConfTool algorithm that assigns reviewers and to reviewers who have, as you noted, wildly variant expectations for what constitutes a good score for the conference.
The Conference Protocols note that “the PC oversees the academic program”—but this year, the program will not be shaped by the PC.
Basing acceptance entirely on numbers, furthermore, does not uphold ADHO’s commitment to
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion because, for instance, the program committee can’t advocate for inclusion of a panel on indigenous data sovereignty, for instance, that might have been lowly ranked because of a reviewer’s
unconscious bias. (For DH2020, we had instances of entire fields of studies being dismissed by reviewers that resulted in low rankings.) Moreover, numerical acceptance means that, in future years, we might see more of the “100 with no explanation” phenomenon
that you point to (or its opposite), because people will think that an extreme number is more useful than any meaningful feedback on a proposal.
I understand that the PC Chairs have made this decision already. If you choose to be transparent about the conference process, however, I would avoid rhetoric about “fairness.”
I know organizing this conference is a monumental task and that reading the hundreds of submissions and thousands of reviews takes time, so again, thank you.
Laura
Dr. Laura Estill
Associate Professor of English
St. Francis Xavier University
Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Digital Humanities
From:
PC2023 <pc2023-bounces@lists.digitalhumanities.org> on behalf of Michael Eberle Sinatra <michael.eberle.sinatra@umontreal.ca>
Date: Tuesday, March 7, 2023 at 12:08 PM
To: pc2023@lists.digitalhumanities.org <pc2023@lists.digitalhumanities.org>
Subject: Re: [Pc2023] Final selection of submissions
Dear Anne and Toma and all the hard working members of the PC,
on behalf of the CCC, I would like to thank you for all your intellectual contribution and time devoted to this crucial component of our annual conference. I look forward to what promises to be a wonderful
event and hope to see as many of you as possible in person in Graz!
Best wishes,
Michael
Michael E. Sinatra | Professeur titulaire et directeur
Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur les humanités numériques (CRIHN)
Responsable du Groupe de Recherche sur les Éditions critiques en contexte Numérique (GREN)
Responsable de l’option doctorale en Humanités numériques, du microprogramme et
de la mineure en HN, Université de Montréal
Co-Chair centerNet, An international network of digital humanities centers