This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published. This article provides a data-driven overview of the developments in the field of digital scholarly editing. It surveys and evaluates the available data source on digital scholarly editions and provides longitudinal analysis of changes in number of projects, geographic distribution, licensing, interfaces and preservation. Digital scholarly editions (DSE) are essential to arts and humanities research, but also, society and culture at large. They are the primary instrument through which textual and cultural heritage, expert knowledge, and public understanding are negotiated. Their comparatively long history makes them especially suited for a diachronic approach, describing their change over time. While digital editions can vary greatly in scope and lifespan, a quantitative analysis of two of the most comprehensive data sources on digital editions can produce data-based insight into the developments within the field over time. Exploring this history and at the same time assessing the available metadata on DSEs is the aim of this article. It presents the state of the two most comprehensive available sources on digital editions and details the methodology and visualisation process undertaken. In its analysis, it is at the same time a quantitative approach to DSEs as well as a critique of the available data sources on editions.

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

Editorial scholarship is once again in a state of upheaval. Digital scholarly editing, for all it has achieved, has not accommodated the increasingly digital nature of cultural production and consumption. The theories and practices of digital scholarly editing need to better account for born-digital cultural materials like social media content, digital fiction, and video games. This paper discusses the state-of-the-art in digital scholarly editing, and advocates for future forms of digital scholarly editing and publishing suited to the born-digital.

In this article, we discuss an innovative audience research methodology developed for the AHRC-funded ‘Beyond the Multiplex: Audiences for Specialised Film in English Regions’ project (BtM). The project combines a computational ontology with a mixed-methods approach drawn from both the social sciences and the humanities, enabling research to be conducted both at scale and in depth, producing complex relational analyses of audiences. BtM aims to understand how we might enable a wide range of audiences to participate in a more diverse film culture, and embrace the wealth of films beyond the mainstream in order to optimise the cultural value of engaging with less familiar films. BtM collects data through a three-wave survey of film audience members’ practices, semi-structured interviews and film-elicitation groups with audience members alongside interviews with policy and industry experts, and analyses of key policy and industry documents. Bringing each of these datasets together within our ontology enables us to map relationships between them across a variety of different concerns. For instance, how cultural engagement in general relates to engagement with specialised films; how different audiences access and/or share films across different platforms and venues; how their engagement with those films enables them to make meaning and generate value; and how all of this is shaped by national and regional policy, film industry practices, and the decisions of cultural intermediaries across the fields of film production, distribution and exhibition. Alongside our analyses, the ontology enables us to produce data visualisations and a suite of analytical tools for audience development studies that stakeholders can use, ensuring the research has impact beyond the academy. This paper sets out our methodology for developing the BtM ontology, so that others may adapt it and develop their own ontologies from mixed-methods empirical data in their studies of other knowledge domains.

This paper discusses a methodology that seeks to address one of the challenges in working with a range of data in mixed-methods audience research, which is how to sort, order and categorise different data so that they can be systematically combined and interrogated. The methodology was developed as part of the "Beyond the Multiplex: audiences for specialised films in English regions" (BtM) project. This project required a mixed methods approach using surveys, interviews, focus groups and document analysis to explore the richness of audience experiences and trends in the context of regional film policy. This required a mixed methods approach using surveys, interviews, focus groups and document analysis. The project utilised a data model approach that uses the principles of a computational ontology in order to sort, order and categorise data for systematic interrogation. The paper discusses methods, data, coding, and the use of a data model to support data analysis. We argue that this approach enables the cross referencing of data that provides a rich, multilayered and relational understanding of film audiences but requires time and attention to data management and coding. Although, additionally it also forms the basis of an open access data resource for future research.