It’s very rare to find an academic department website where the research outputs are all websites, and not only websites but well-made websites offering full-text and rich interactive content. I only found one such department while scouring the web for JURN (it was in Nottingham in the English Midlands, actually not far from me), and was pleased to see open access websites were all that the department produced.

Producing work in this way is not going to be an option for everyone — there will be skills and talent issues, issues with copyright vs. fair use in areas such as art history, issues of the cost of some specialist tools and the training to use them, and often intractable issues of time-management if one lacks the skills and thus has to work with a volunteer student to make your website, etc.

But the biggest hurdle is no doubt persuading the university managers that you deserve the same credit for a polished and rich website as for a journal article or a book. Leonardo magazine has an article in the Feb 2009 issue on this topic, and the basic PDF is freely available…

“This paper argues for redefining evaluation criteria for faculty working in new media research and makes specific recommendations for promotion and tenure committees in U.S. universities.”

Similar thoughts on how to validate new media, from a 2009 Reference Services Review study of how undergraduates access and comprehend research. “Undergraduate research in the public domain: the evaluation of non-academic sources online”…

“…finds that authority, accuracy, currency, coverage, and objectivity (as evaluative criteria for academic resources) are not always applicable to evaluating sources in the online public domain (blogs, wikis, forums, etc). Instead, she encourages librarians to look at whether online resources are at a level of scholarship appropriate to the task, support the argument of the assignment, add value, and present legitimate information. Unfortunately, many faculty members restrict students from using internet resources, such as Google Scholar, and in the worst-case situations, prohibit the use of anything except books and journals found in the library in hardcopy format.”