Increasingly, humanities scholars are engaging communities in their research, teaching, preservation, and programming. This work, which is taking place around the world, can be broadly grouped together as public and publicly engaged humanities scholarship. Public humanities work encompasses humanities research, teaching, preservation and programming, conducted for diverse individuals and communities. Publicly engaged humanities work, meanwhile, encompasses humanities research, teaching, preservation and programming, conducted with and for diverse individuals and communities. As the field grows, it is critical that scholarly communications adapt to capture the methodologies and outcomes of these initiatives and the diverse, often digital, outputs created. The innovative nature of this work, driven, often, by co-equal partnership with community members and institutions, broadens the horizons and inclusivity of humanities knowledge. It also, however, creates certain challenges that make publication both more complex and more important.
This paper explores the challenges associated with the publication of public and publicly engaged humanities scholarship. It is the product of a working group convened in February 2020 by Routledge, Taylor & Francis and the National Humanities Alliance to identify and discuss model practices for publishing on public and publicly engaged humanities work in higher education. Its central thesis is this: the spread of publicly engaged work via academic publication holds the potential to benefit all, across communities and humanities disciplines. Each segment of the paper explores a specific challenge associated with public humanities and publication: Publishing Lifecycle, Value, Inclusivity and Process. Following a similar structure in each segment, authors, including scholars and publishers, outline the context of the challenge and the model practices that have been implemented to make the publication of public and publicly engaged humanities work stronger and more inclusive. The paper concludes with a model publication pathway for feedback and critique, articulating where, when, and how publishing can fit in the practice of public and publicly engaged humanities.