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Digital editions of text

Citation for published version:
Franzini, G, Terras, M & Mahony, S 2019, 'Digital editions of text: Surveying user requirements in the Digital
Humanities', Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, vol. 12, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.1145/3230671

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):
10.1145/3230671

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 1 

Digital Editions of Text: Surveying User Requirements in 

the Digital Humanities  
 

Greta Franzinia, Melissa Terrasb, Simon Mahonya 

 
aUniversity College London, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities 

bUniversity of Edinburgh, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 

 
 

 

Abstract 

This paper presents the findings of a web survey designed to better understand the expectations and use of 
digital editions of texts. The survey, modelled upon a detailed analysis of 242 projects, recorded 218 
complete responses, shedding light on user requirements of digital editions. Specifically, the survey 
indicates that issues of data reuse, licensing, image availability, and comprehensive documentation are the 
most requested features of digital editions although ones which seldom are provided. This analysis feeds 
into previous studies on good practice in building Digital Humanities resources and puts forward practical 
recommendations for both creators and funders of digital editions in an e ort to promote a stronger 
consideration of user needs. This survey will be of interest to those who produce digital editions of texts, 
including developers and engineers, and will also be of interest to those who commission and fund these 
projects, such as universities, libraries and archives, whose documentary collections are often showcased in 
digital editions.  

 

 

Introduction 
"good idea this survey!"1 

 
Since the early 1980s there has been a great amount of effort put into the creation of digital 

textual editions. A digital textual edition can be broadly defined as a reconstruction of a literary 

text inserted in the text's print or manuscript tradition and which makes use of digital 

technologies to reproduce any level of detail of that text. To better understand the methods, 

technologies and rationale behind the production of digital editions, we created a Catalogue 
that has so far identified and categorised 256 of these projects produced worldwide.2 The user-

side of digital editions, however, has not received equal attention. The study described in this 

article follows on from the few existing efforts in this relatively unexplored area and sought to 

answer the following research question: what are the expectations of digital editions in the 

Digital Humanities and how do these correlate with existing digital editions? 

 

Here, we compare the findings of our analysis of digital editions, which detailed their attributes 

and implementation, with the results of a widespread user survey that identified the important 

and salient features the community most desires. We compare and contrast the two, resulting 

in a series of practical recommendations for creators and funders of digital editions, indicating 

that issues of data reuse, licensing, image availability, and comprehensive documentation are 

the most requested features of digital editions (although ones which seldom are provided). This 

                                                        
1 Comment left by a participant of this survey (in reply to Question 20 - see further below). 
2 See: https://dig-ed-cat.acdh.oeaw.ac.at. This analysis was undertaken by the first author. All 

numerical considerations made in this paper with regard to the Catalogue of Digital Editions reflect the 

state of the project as of May 2017. Since then, new digital editions have been added and these are not 

included in the data analysis described here. 



 2 

paper is the first comparative analysis of the differences between what the Digital Humanities 

community who builds online digital editions of texts provides, and what the user-base wants. 

It therefore provides useful guidance for those producing digital editions of texts and will also 

be of interest to those who commission, fund, and support these projects, including universities, 

libraries and archives, whose documentary collections are often showcased in digital editions. 

 

Digital Editions 
In the Digital Humanities, the term 'digital edition' is typically used to denote projects that make 

use of digital technologies to reproduce editions and transcriptions of literary texts, be those 

inscribed on tablets or penned on papyrus, vellum or paper. Digital editions themselves are to 

be considered an asset of cultural heritage, as Tomasi explains: 

 

Le edizioni digitali fanno parte del patrimonio culturale e vanno quindi 

valorizzate al pari delle raccolte librarie, archivistiche e museali, anche in 

considerazione della realizzazione di digital libraries nella forma di 

aggregatori di risorse come strumento di accesso integrato al patrimonio 

culturale [...]. 

(2013, p. 25)3 

 

The multiple definitions and types of (digital) edition that exist are listed in the Lexicon of 

Scholarly Editing.4 Scholars distinguish between digital and digitised editions –the former 

indicating interactivity as opposed to mere reproductions of analogue material–, or between 

digital editions and digital scholarly editions –the latter describing a project with a strong 

critical component.   

 

Digital editions are a key interest in the Digital Humanities. For almost forty years, the 

community has been building these resources (Vanhoutte 2010),5 which now number in the 

hundreds (Franzini et al., 2016). A handful of digital editions are worth mentioning to briefly 

show the range of contributions they make to textual scholarship. One of the earliest digital 

editions produced was The Canterbury Tales Project; conceived in 1989, published seven years 

later on CD-ROM (Robinson, 2006) and now part of a collaborative editing platform6, this 

project bears witness to developments over the past twenty years. Another example is the Codex 

Sinaiticus project, widely recognised as one of the first endeavours to virtually reunite a 

disbanded work, in this case a fourth century manuscript of the Christian Bible whose leaves 

are scattered between the UK, Russia, Egypt and Germany.7 The Briefwechsel Sauer-Seuffert 

project builds a body of correspondence into a dynamic timeline.8 And, finally, the Digital 

Dead Sea Scrolls project mimics the act of rolling through parchment scrolls allowing users to 

interactively select regions on an image to inspect the corresponding text.9 These examples 

show the variety of projects available, often carried out in order to provide wide access to 

cultural heritage, which would otherwise be restricted to experts (e.g. researchers, conservators 

                                                        
3 The following is an English translation of the quote by the first author: "Digital editions form part of 

cultural heritage and should, therefore, be valued equally to library, archival and museum collections; 

they should also be considered for inclusion in digital libraries –intended here as resource-aggregators– 

as access tools to cultural heritage [...]." 
4 See: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907122807/http://uahost.uantwerpen.be/lse/index.php/lexicon/editio

n-digital/ 
5 Van Hulle has published an annotated list of key theoretical works in the field (2006), to which the 

authors would add Hockey (2000) and more recent volumes, including Sutherland and Deegan (2012), 

Pierazzo (2016), Driscoll and Pierazzo (2016), Sahle (2014) and McGann (2014). 
6 Available at: http://www.textualcommunities.usask.ca/web/canterbury-tales 
7 The Codex Sinaiticus project is available at: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907124405/http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/ 
8 See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170907124016/http://sauer-seuffert.onb.ac.at 
9 See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170907124248/http://dss.collections.imj.org.il 



 3 

and other individuals who are specifically granted access) or to special occasions (e.g. 

temporary exhibitions in libraries or museums). 

 

Related Work 
Despite the large number of digital editions being created, no extensive study has been 

conducted to discuss the needs of users of digital editions, with the consequent result that 

anybody attempting to do such research, or build a digital edition, does so with very little prior 

evidence as to usage patterns or requirements. In 2008, the LAIRAH (Log analysis of Internet 

Resources in the Arts and the Humanities) initiative10 analysed twenty-one digital resources 

and found that: 

 

P[rincipal]I[nvestigator]s [...] infer[red] user requirements from their 

own behaviour. 

(Warwick et al., 2008, p. 390) 

 

In 2010, Terras stated that project reports typically disclose information about the number of 

visits, downloads and time spent on a particular page but not the users’ actual experiences, and 

that few users self-report (Terras 2010, pp. 6-7). In the same year, an article entitled 'Electronic 

Editions for Everyone' hinted at users but, in fact, mainly discusses the difficulties creators face 

in building digital editions for a wide range of users, not the identity of these users nor their 

needs for digital editions (Robinson, 2010). In 2012, Hughes' volume Evaluating and 

Measuring the Value, Use and Impact of Digital Collections examined, as the title suggests, 

approaches to evaluating digital collections, not digital editions, even though digital editions 

can, in certain cases, be considered collections or archives in the sense that they collect 

documents that make-up a particular literary work: 

 

In a digital environment, archive has gradually come to mean a purposeful 

collection of surrogates. As we know, meanings change over time, and archive in 

a digital context has come to suggest something that blends features of editing 

and archiving. To meld features of both — to have the care of treatment and 

annotation of an edition and the inclusiveness of an archive — is one of the 

tendencies of recent work in electronic editing. One such project, the William 

Blake Archive, was awarded a prize from the Modern Language Association 

recently as a distinguished scholarly edition. (Price, 2009) 

 

In 2013, Dot Porter published an article entitled 'Medievalists and the Scholarly Digital Edition' 

in which she summarised the results of two surveys she conducted in 2002 and 2011 to learn 

more about medievalists' attitudes toward electronic resources, including digital editions 

(Porter, 2013). Both surveys asked participants from different departments to indicate their use 

of print and digital editions in a five-point Likert scale (Electronic only; Electronic mostly; 

Electronic and print; Print mostly; Print only). 

Her first survey, circulated in 2002, addressed a random controlled sample of 92 faculty 

members of medieval studies in different departments and was delivered via mail (86 

participants) and email (6 participants); of the 92 surveys sent, 43 (46.7%) were completed 

(ibid., p. 5). A second survey was prepared in 2011 and targeted a wider audience. To do so, 

Porter again selected a random controlled sample of faculty members but also shared the survey 

via Twitter, Facebook and mailing lists. The total number of respondents of the 2011 survey 

was 169 (27 from faculty, 142 from the open survey). The difference between the two surveys, 

                                                        
10 See: https://web.archive.org/web/20171008085208/http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/LAIRAH/ 



 4 

Porter informs, was that the 2002 survey did not ask about the use of electronic books (i.e. those 

available on e-readers such as Kindle, Nook and the iPad), which were only popularised a 

decade later (ibid., p. 6). The results of the 2002 survey indicated a preference of print over 

electronic editions, possibly because of the lower number of electronic resources available at 

that time. In the 2011 survey, a majority of all groups except for music and history again 

reported a preference for print editions. In summary, Porter's experiments showed that the nine-

year gap between surveys did not record a large shift in medievalists' usage of digital editions, 

a behaviour which, she posits, might be explained by their lack of interest in this type of 

resource (as opposed to electronic journals and facsimiles) and "a lack of understanding by non-

digital-editing medievalists about what exactly a digital scholarly edition is" (ibid., p. 14). 

More recent monographs on digital scholarly editing, such as Digital Critical Editions by 

Apollon et al. (2014) also do not give much space to user-studies (Franzini, 2015).  

A 2015 MIT online announcement searching for people to test the Infinite Ulysses digital 

edition is one of a very small number of initiatives interested in understanding how a project is 

used (Visconti, 2015). More worryingly, at the 2015 conference of the European Society for 

Textual Scholarship (ESTS) entitled 'Users of Digital Editions'11 –the first effort of a well-

established scholarly network to examine users and their needs– only one paper touched upon 

the topic and that described a user interface.12 Interfaces of digital editions were also the central 

theme of the 2016 conference Digital Scholarly Editions as Interfaces 13  organised by the 

Digital Scholarly Editions Initial Training Network (DiXiT)14. In the same year, Dillen and 

Nyet (2016) introduced three categories of users modelled upon three types of use the authors 

envisage for digital editions, confirming that users and user needs are not well known but often 

inferred by creators: 

 

At the most basic level of interest, users are looking for simple browsing 

functionalities. To satisfy these users, editors will want to present the materials 

within an attractive and intuitive interface. At a more advanced level of interest, 

users will want to research the materials the DSE [Digital Scholarly Edition] has 

to offer, and access them in non-linear ways. To reach those users, editors will 

need to provide indexes, advanced search options, advanced textual comparison 

options, to open the corpus up for analysis in a standardized format, etc. Finally, 

at the highest level of interest, there are meta-users, who want to re-use the DSE's 

data for their own purposes: to write their own transcriptions of the DSE's 

facsimiles (and publish the results), to build their own interface around the data 

                                                        
11 The flyer of the ESTS 2015 conference can be accessed here: http://cts.dmu.ac.uk/ESTS/ESTS-

flyer.pdf. The ESTS homepage is available at: 

https://web.archive.org/save/_embed/https://textualscholarship.eu/ 
12 The talk, entitled “Beyond Google Search: Editions as Dynamic Sites of Interaction”, was given by 

PhD student Shane McGarry from Maynooth University. McGarry reported on the user survey 

undertaken for The Woodman Diary project to evaluate the usability of the digital edition's user-

interface. The project is available at: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20170907125220/http://dhprojects.maynoothuniversity.ie/woodman/ 
13 More information about the conference is available at: 

https://web.archive.org/save/_embed/https://informationsmodellierung.uni-

graz.at/en/events/archive/digital-scholarly-editions-as-interfaces/. Video recordings of the talks given 

at this conference are available at the ZIM ACDH YouTube channel: 

https://web.archive.org/channel/UCFb_IysRdxHsvS9dZw1O1lw 
14 For more information about DiXiT, see: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907125622/http://dixit.uni-koeln.de/ 

http://cts.dmu.ac.uk/ESTS/ESTS-flyer.pdf
http://cts.dmu.ac.uk/ESTS/ESTS-flyer.pdf


 5 

the DSE provides, or to perform functionalities the DSE does not (yet) offer (and 

publish the results). 

(Dillen and Neyt, 2016, p. 3) 

 

The closest we have come to exploring the gap between creators and users of digital editions is 

the relatively recent establishment of the RIDE Review Journal of Digital Scholarly Editions 

and Resources, which excels at evaluating digital scholarly editions through the publication of 

individual reviews 15 : however, no overarching analysis has been done on community 

investment in digital resources, as compared to user desires of digital resources. Users of digital 

editions should be able to share their concerns, needs and feedback with regard to the creation 

of these projects. This large gap should no longer be ignored as excluding users' voices from 

the early development stages of digital edition can lead to neglect: 

 

In the case of digital humanities large amounts of public funding is wasted 

if a resource is not used.  

(Warwick et al., 2006, p. 16) 

 

Again, in reference to Digital Humanities resources in general, not digital editions specifically:  

 

Very few projects maintained contact with their users or undertook any 

organised user testing, and many did not have a clear idea how popular the 

resource was or what users were doing with it. 

 (Warwick et al., 2007, p. 2) 

 

These studies confirm that by involving users in the creation process of a digital edition the risk 

of neglect might be reduced and, therefore, the chances of it being used in the long-term 

increase. So why are creators not engaging potential users more actively? Aside from the 

findings of the aforementioned LAIRAH study, the most recent article on the topic reports that 

usability testing in Digital Humanities is not yet widely established for a variety of reasons, 

including the absence of usability tests or survey templates in the Humanities for specific 

services and the vague or unspecific research questions feeding the development of the services 

(Bulatovic et al., 2016): 

 

The aim of those of us designing resources in digital humanities, therefore, 

remains analogous to this. We must understand the needs and behaviours of 

users. As a result of this understanding, we must design resources that fit 

well with what our users already do, while providing advantages in terms of 

convenience, speed of access, storage capacity and innovative information 

tools that digital publication affords. If we do so, there is every chance that 

such resources will be used and will help to make possible new kinds of 

scholarship that would be inconceivable without digital content, tools and 

delivery mechanisms. 

(Warwick, 2012, p. 19) 

 

 

This article reports on the first initiative to bring together a varied group of users of digital 

editions with a view to identifying needs and expectations. Before turning to this study, 

however, it is first necessary to introduce the Catalogue of Digital Editions as the data contained 

therein will help us better evaluate user needs against the digital (scholarly) editions being built 

in the Digital Humanities. 

 

                                                        
15 Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20170907125810/http://ride.i-d-e.de/ 



 6 

The Catalogue of Digital Editions 
The Catalogue of Digital Editions was first launched by the first author in 2012 in response to 

a need to survey and identify best practice in the field of digital editing. Inspired by Patrick 

Sahle's Catalog of Digital Scholarly Editions,16 the first resource of this kind, this Catalogue 

sought to examine online digital editions in order to extract statistical information and thus 

better observe developments in the field.  

Franzini et al. (2016) described the early days of the Catalogue. In summary, data collection 

began as a spreadsheet for the first author's personal use; there, she recorded a small number of 

identifying features for every project, including name, URL, name of manager(s), responsible 

institution(s), and the historical period to which the edited text belonged. In time, with the 

addition of more projects the number of cataloguing criteria also increased to address as many 

dimensions as possible (e.g. type of licence, availability of images, search functionality, 

provision of indices and download options, etc.). Once a stable table structure was reached, a 

decision was made to publicly share the spreadsheet as a collaborative document for others to 

use and edit should they so wish. Although the Catalogue did not see a large number of external 

contributions, the interest shown over a period of two years prompted the first author to 

maintain this list as an open and citeable data resource in GitHub.17  

In the summer of 2016, the Catalogue of Digital Editions turned into a collaboration with the 

Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities at the Austrian Academy of Sciences; the goal of the 

collaboration is to give the Catalogue dynamic functionality, shaping it into a web application 

and dissemination platform to allow users to contribute, download, browse, search, visualise 

and filter data around their research interests. In April 2017, the German Datenbank-Infosystem 

(DBIS) added the Catalogue to its list of open scientific databases as a service for use in over 

300 libraries in Germany.18 As of September 2017, the number of cataloguing features used by 

the Catalogue is 49, and users have requested an additional five features to be added.19  

Ultimately, as outlined by the digital publications manager of the J. Paul Getty Trust, the 

Catalogue proposes an evaluation model for digital editions and similar digital educational 

resources: 

   

Though limited to its own particular subset of digital publishing activity, 

Franzini's Catalogue comprises a dataset of some 230 digital editions, 

currently, with some fifty consistent and comparable pieces of data on each, 

that range from the edition's subject matter and URL, to its features, textual 

encoding scheme, and technological infrastructure. While it takes a more 

object, data-focused approach to reviewing and cataloguing the included 

editions, the Catalogue also uniquely offers the possibility of rich comparison 

and analysis across publications, even if that more subjective and evaluative 

work is yet to be done. It may also someday provide a model to be applied to 

the evaluation of other types of digital publishing projects, specifically like 

the Mellon-funded university press projects, the Getty's OSCI collaborative, 

and other open access, scholarly editions which have been the subject of our 

history here thus far. 

(Albers, 2017) 

 

 

The analysis in the present paper does not consider the fourteen digital editions in the Catalogue 

marked as digitised editions (i.e. whose value in the 'Digital' column of the Catalogue table is 

                                                        
16 Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20170907125945/http://www.digitale-edition.de 
17 See: https://github.com/gfranzini/digEds_cat 
18 See: http://rzblx10.uni-

regensburg.de/dbinfo/detail.php?bib_id=allefreien&colors=&ocolors=&lett=k&tid=0&titel_id=10204. 

The number of libraries that make use of this service increases on a monthly basis. 
19 See: https://github.com/gfranzini/digEds_cat/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Afeature  

https://github.com/gfranzini/digEds_cat


 7 

0) or, in other words, projects that exist as electronic or digital versions of print editions.20 This 

means that only 242 of the 256 editions present in the Catalogue were analysed.21 

 

Methodology 
To answer this study's research question (what are the expectations of digital editions in the 

Digital Humanities and how do these correlate with existing digital editions?), on 30th March 

2017 the authors circulated a web survey entitled 'Expectations of Digital (Textual) Editions' 

to collect information about what users expect or want from a digital edition. This survey was 

targeted at the Digital Humanities community,22 the field the authors identify with and within 

which many digital editions take shape. 

The decision to collect data about the users of digital editions through a web survey was dictated 

by a number of factors. Firstly, web surveys are inexpensive; secondly, they are often quicker 

to set-up and run compared to other methods, which typically require calls for participation and 

participant selection; and thirdly, they allow to survey a large population and to collect large 

data samples (Horner, 2011, p. 956). On the other hand, the nature of web surveys automatically 

excludes participants who do not have access to an Internet connection (ibid.). This drawback, 

however, was not relevant for this particular survey, as an Internet connection is the prerequisite 

for the consultation and use of digital editions,23 whether users are accessing the web from their 

own machines or from library workstations. Those who do not have access to an Internet 

connection are unable to work with digital editions (unless these allow for offline use, which is 

not usually the case). 

 

Survey Design 
In order to compare the results of the survey against the 242 digital editions in the Catalogue 

of Digital Editions, the questions were modelled upon the 49 cataloguing features used in the 

Catalogue. To encourage as many responses as possible, the authors opted for twenty questions 

only, some of which grouped features by typology or purpose (e.g. Question 11 brings together 

indices, string search, advanced search and APIs - see further below). The questionnaire 

                                                        
20 The reader may ask why a digital edition is in the Catalogue if it is neither digital not an edition (if, 

in other words, its 'Digital' and 'Edition' values in the Catalogue are set to 0). This is because, while 

some projects self-define as digital and editions, the meaning of both terms does not match that of 

Sahle's definitions, which the Catalogue uses as a reference to catalogue entries (2008). 
21 The reader is reminded that this analysis was done in May 2017 and thus ignores digital editions 

added to the Catalogue from June 2017 onward. 
22 The survey was distributed via the authors' Twitter accounts, and to the following mailing lists and 

Facebook groups: Associazione per l'Informatica Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale (AIUCD) at 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907130136/http://lists.lists.digitalhumanities.org/mailman/listinfo/ai

ucd-l; Corpora at 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907130215/http://clu.uni.no/icame/corpora/sub.html; Digital 

Humanities im deutschsprachigen raum (DHd) at 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907130307/http://dig-hum.de/dhd-mailingliste; Digital Classicist at 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907130356/https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-

bin/webadmin?A0=DIGITALCLASSICIST; Digital Medievalist at 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907130454/http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l; Humanist 

at https://web.archive.org/web/20170907130536/http://dhhumanist.org; TEI-L at 

https://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A0=TEI-L; AIUCD Facebook group at 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/aiucd/; Digital Medievalist Facebook group at  

https://www.facebook.com/groups/49320313760/; European Association for Digital Humanities 

(EADH) Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/109971049335068/; UCL Centre for 

Digital Humanities Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/UCLDH/. Facebook and Twitter 

posts were re-advertised by individuals in numerous other social spaces. 
23 Early "offline" examples of digital editions, such as the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), were 

published on CDROM, but these are rare (and often replaced, like the TLG, by an online version), 

difficult to access or expensive to purchase.  



 8 

contained a mix of multiple choice and Likert scale questions24 for a total of twenty questions. 

The Likert Scale was used to measure the importance of a particular feature in a five-point 

scale: 

 

1 - Not important 

2 - Slightly Important 

3 - Moderately Important 

4 - Important 

5 - Very Important 

 

After generally imposing a structure, Question 20 (Is there anything else you would like to tell 

us about your user needs for digital editions that we have not covered here?) was designed to 

give respondents the opportunity to freely express their views, thus mitigating what 

Krippendorff identifies as a common problem in such surveys: 

 

For efficiency's sake, researchers gain a considerable advantage if they can 

impose a structure on the data-making process so that the results are readily 

analyzable. Surveys, mail questionnaires, and structured interviews typically 

offer respondents predefined choices that are easily tabulated, coded, or 

processed by computer. But they thereby also prevent the respondents' 

individual voices from being heard. (Krippendorff, 2004, p. 41) 

 

The software chosen for this particular web survey was Opinio
25

, which is freely provided by 

the author's home institution. The survey broadly defined a digital edition as: 

 

an edition or transcription of a text that makes use of digital technologies to 

enhance users' access and experience of the source material. It can be a 

completed or an ongoing project, and does not necessarily have to provide a 

critical commentary. A mere replica of a printed edition is, in this instance, not 

considered to be a digital edition. 

 

As Horner reports (2011, p. 957), "[...] Web surveys may pose additional participant 

confidentiality issues", which might deter participants from contributing their answers. In this 

survey, demographic information about the participants, such as gender, age, ethnicity, location 

and religion, was not collected, as it was not considered relevant. The complete anonymity was 

announced in the survey's advertising message and the chosen software was set to not reveal 

any information about participants to the authors.  

 

On the closing date one month later, 30th April 2017, the survey recorded 218 completed 

responses and 130 incomplete responses, for a total of 348 stored responses. Comparatively, 

the LAIRAH study recorded 149 completed responses over a period of four months (Warwick 

et al., 2008, p. 385) and Porter's aforementioned 2002 and 2011 surveys recorded 43 and 169 

completed responses respectively. 

With every survey, there is the issue of representativeness, that is, the quality or relevance of 

the results and if these adequately represent the total target population (Schouten et al., 2009). 

Despite being set-up to qualitatively assess digital editions in relation to user expectations, the 

survey's large number of responses might also be considered statistically relevant. However, as 

no evidence exists with regard to population size, the authors refrain from claiming 

                                                        
24 For more information about the Likert scale, see Allen and Seaman (2007). 
25 Available at: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907130835/https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/services/learning-

teaching/elearning-staff/core-tools/opinio. Opinio provides survey data in HTML, PDF, SPSS and Raw 

Data formats. 



 9 

representativeness, and acknowledge the qualitative nature of the results. While preliminary, 

these results are still valuable for those who are planning to build digital editions. 

 

In the next section, we juxtapose the features of 242 digital editions built by the community 

present in the Catalogue of Digital Editions with the 218 complete answers collected through 

this web survey in order to identify meeting and diverging points. The 130 incomplete 

questionnaires are not considered in this discussion, as their differing degree of completeness 

do not make for a uniform analysis. Median (of the five-point Likert Scale) and Standard 

Deviation (from the median) values will be hereafter referred to as M and SD respectively. 

Results 
To facilitate the presentation of the statistics, the present article does not defer the discussion 

of the results but divides them between the twenty survey questions to readily contextualise 

them. Therefore, where applicable, for every question we provide a breakdown of the 

corresponding responses, their correlation with the statistics gathered from the Catalogue of 

Digital Editions, a brief discussion and ensuing practical recommendations. The results section 

is then followed by a summary discussion, which visualises the overall creation trend in digital 

editing against the results of this survey. 

Questions 1, 2, 3: Overview of Respondents 
The largest group within the 218 survey participants identified themselves as a researcher 

(38.67%); professors follow in second place (25.78%); the undefined 'other academic position' 

participants place third (12.5%); and students in fourth (11.72%); and 29 participants provided 

new identifying categories, some of which could have been represented by the options already 

provided (e.g. the free-text answer 'PhD student' was not necessary seeing as a 'student' category 

was already provided). This is a first indication that digital editions are more likely to be 

accessed and potentially reused in research. 

 

Almost 82% of participants identified themselves as belonging to the Humanities, 10% as 

working across different disciplines and 7.85% as belonging to the Applied Sciences. These 

results may seem unsurprising, given that the documentary and literary content of digital 

editions is at the core of Humanities studies, but we have no concrete information as to what 

exactly forms this clear majority. There could be many reasons for the survey's popularity 

among humanists: the advertising channels used to circulate the survey were mostly 

humanities-oriented and would therefore explain the low science participation; traditionally, 

the preparation of (digital) editions of documentary heritage is a humanities-driven activity; the 

low presence of scientists might also be dictated by the fact that few practitioners have a need 

for digital editions of cultural and historical texts.  

 

With respect to the specific disciplines of the 218 responding participants, 44% are involved in 

literary studies and 22% conduct historical studies. Within this 66% subpopulation of literary 

and historical studies, 17% focus on the classical period, while 16% research upon the Middle 

Ages. Other disciplines are as diverse as Shakespeare Studies, Law, History of Ideas, History 

of Daily Life, Television, Agriculture, Medieval Legal History, Medieval Medicine, Surgery 

and the History of Medicine, Musicology, Liturgical Medieval Chant, History of exotic animals 

in the Middle Ages, Folklore, Engineering, Historical Metrology, Theatre, Architectural 

History and Anthropology, Military History, Hittitology, Children's Literature, Language 

Pedagogy, Food History, Digital Archaeology, Sinology, Lexicology, Social History of the 

Ottoman Middle East, Conceptual History, Journalism, Visual Rhetoric, Caribbean Literature, 

Celtic Studies, Information Science, Sociology of culture and Science, History of Photography 

and Bureaucracy. Those who identified as scientists include, among others, a computer scientist 

focussed on interaction design, a cyber security and automation engineer, an information 



 10 

architecture writer, a data modeller and web frontend developer, and a computer programmer 

with an interest in classical literature. 

Question 4: What do you primarily seek in a digital edition? 
Participants were asked to specify what primary use they make of digital editions. The largest 

group of users, 79 (36%), consume digital editions for data and public reuse, while 70 (32%) 

users look for a complete educational resource to learn more about the subject matter. A third 

group of users, 55 (25%), is interested in digital editions for private (re)use. One user stated 

that (s)he seeks the "reconstruction of the lost original of a text" and all materials used to that 

end; another user expressed the need to annotate digital editions and share the annotations; two 

users emphasised the importance of being able to search a text.  

 

 

Question 5: How important is the scholarly component of a digital edition 

for you? 
This question was designed to elicit the rate of importance of the scholarly component of a 

digital edition. According to Sahle's definition of a digital scholarly edition, used in this survey 

as a reference for answers, projects that do not offer a critical examination of the text(s) are not 

scholarly (2008). 

Survey results (M = 4, SD = 1.02). Almost 50% of respondents rated the scholarly component 

of a digital edition as very important. Despite being affected by the three 'No opinion' outliers, 

the Median score indicates that there is an expectation that digital editions should critically 

assess the texts at hand. 

Catalogue data. Of the 242 digital editions under consideration in the Catalogue, 29 (11%) 

were catalogued as not scholarly.  

Recommendation. This low percentage (11%) is encouraging as it suggests that creators of 

digital editions are already meeting the needs of many users in this regard. Creators are reminded 

to always provide a glossary or list of domain-specific terminology in their critical edition, 

regardless of its intended audience. 

 

Question 6: How important is knowing the production lifespan or duration 

of a digital edition (begin and end years)? 
This question was asked to understand how important it is for users to know the production 

span of a digital edition, that is, the time taken to complete the digital edition as intended by its 

editors. This duration can vary greatly: one ongoing project will be funded for as long as fifteen 

years26, while a completed project ran for sixteen years.27 Duration is not necessarily indicative 

of the quality of a digital edition but combined with other factors, such as funding and team 

size, it provides a rough understanding of what is achievable with a given amount of resources, 

therefore offering a means of comparison. Start and end dates also place digital editions in a 

historical and chronological context, helping users better appreciate the technological 

affordances and choices made at a particular time. 

 

Survey results (M = 4, SD = 1.23). 63 (28.9%) participants rated the knowledge of the duration 

of a digital edition as important, while slightly more than 23% of participants consider it to be 

a very important characteristic. 

Catalogue data. Of the 242 digital editions under consideration in the Catalogue, 69 (28.5%) 

do not provide either begin or end years ('forthcoming' is included in this count as it does not 

                                                        
26 The Edition Humboldt Digital project, for example, expects to reach completion in 2032. See: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907130923/https://dig-ed-cat.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/editions/detail/251 
27 The Dead Sea Scrolls project, at: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20171008134728/http://dss.collections.imj.org.il  



 11 

provide a more specific estimate of the expected project start date); 120 (49.5%) provide both 

begin and end years (where the end year can also be 'present', e.g. 2017); and 53 (21.9%) 

provide partial information by either specifying the beginning or the end year of the project. 

In sum, just over half of the projects in the Catalogue (50.5%) provide complete information 

about project duration. 

Recommendation. Accordingly, given this question's high Median of 4, it is recommended 

that creators publish beginning and (expected) end years. 

 

 

Question 7: How important is knowing which audience the digital edition 

targets (e.g. students, scholars, general public)? 
Although creators do not preclude unintended audiences from using their resources, making 

this information known helps users contextualise the data and better to understand the 

objectives of the creators. If, for instance, a digital edition is targeted at experts of medieval 

Latin manuscripts, creators might perceive the publication of a glossary of terms or a list of 

conventions as redundant, and thus refrain from making one available. Making this choice 

abundantly clear on the project website helps define the scope of the endeavour, and guides 

users accordingly. 

 
Survey results (M = 3, SD = 1.19). Almost 31% of respondents rated target audience as 

moderately important information, 23% as important and 22% as very important. 

Catalogue data. Of the 242 digital editions considered in the Catalogue, the majority, 141 

(58.2%) do not provide information about the intended audience. Out of the remaining 101, 54 

(53.4%) explicitly target the general public (analogous terms used include 'global audience' and 

'laypeople'). 

Recommendation. Given the response to this question, it is recommended that creators specify 

the intended audience of their project.  

 

 

Question 8: How important is detailed editorial and technical 

documentation (i.e. glossaries, information about the technologies used to 

produce the digital edition, the imaging settings, was the text OCR'd or 

keyed, etc.)? 
Documenting the process of creation behind any type of project serves to communicate 

development, quality and to give appropriate context. With documentation, creators can make 

aims, limitations and the expected use known to their users, as well as facilitate the reuse of a 

resource. One of the basic principles and assumptions of research is reproducibility or, in other 

words, the ability of one researcher to take the work of another researcher, follow their pathway 

and arrive at the same results. Reproducibility is key to research acceptance and validation, so 

much so that entire courses are based on this principle.28 While reproducibility might not be 

essential to all disciplines (Casadevall and Fang, 2010), scholars argue that research should be 

sufficiently documented in order for it to be accepted by the community.29 Moreover, although 

scholars in the Humanities do not typically reproduce digital editions, some of their constituent 

parts might be reusable (e.g. the texts themselves, an XML schema or other underlying code), 

and should, therefore, be adequately described to facilitate reuse and reproducibility (Allison, 

2016). Ten years ago, the LAIRAH study found that many digital humanities resources did not 

keep organised documentation (2008, p. 391). 

                                                        
28 Such as the Coursera Reproducible Research online course by Johns Hopkins University, available 

at: https://www.coursera.org/learn/reproducible-research. 
29 A 2016 Nature survey asked 1,500 researchers to measure reproducibility, with somewhat alarming 

results. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170907131248/http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-

scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970. 



 12 

 
Survey results (M = 4, SD = 1.12). An aggregate of 152 participants (69%) rated the 

importance of detailed editorial and technical documentation between important (24.31%) and 

very important (45.41%).  

Catalogue data. Of the 242 digital editions considered in the Catalogue, four of them do not 

make clear what the source of the edited text is (i.e. is it derived from a printed edition, what is 

the base text, on which digitised documents is the digital edition based on, is it a new born-

digital edition), while 238 provide some form of philological or editorial statement. Of the 238 

projects, 122 (51%) provide partial information with regard to the source of the text and the 

editorial policy, and the remaining 116 (49%) provide complete information. 

With respect to the technical information, that is, information about technologies used and 

related standards used, 118 (48%) digital editions do not provide any such information, 39 

(16%) provide partial information and 68 (28%) provide complete information; finally, the 

websites of the 17 (7%) digital editions published on CD-ROM or protected by a pay-wall/login 

system also do not provide this information, which is not to say that it is not available on the 

CD-ROM itself or within the subscription portal. 

Only 50 projects (approximately 20%) out of 242 provide both complete editorial and technical 

documentation. Disappointingly, these results corroborate the LAIRAH findings published 

over ten years ago. 

Recommendation. Given the low statistics currently discernible in the Catalogue and, 

conversely, the high rating of this question, creators must take more care to incorporate 

comprehensive documentation. This should provide descriptive information about the project 

itself, including purpose, motivation, duration, limitations, human and financial resources 

invested, and target audience. Additionally, and also in reference to Question 9 below, it should 

provide details about the source document's history, its significance, context, its provenance 

and current repository or location, as well as technical documentation pertaining to its 

digitisation (image-capturing equipment and settings) and to the entire project back-end.  

 

 

Question 9: How important is the exhaustiveness of contextual information 

(e.g. current repository of source material, links to external resources, 

quality of source materials, etc.)? 
Similarly, participants were asked to rate the importance of contextual information, such as the 

provenance and current repository of the source material(s). 

 

Survey results (M = 4, SD = 0.93). An aggregate of 160 participants (73%) rated the provision 

of contextual information between important (36.24%) and very important (37.16%). 

Catalogue data. Of the 242 digital editions considered in the Catalogue, 191 (78.9%) provide 

information about the institutions currently housing the source material(s), while 19 (7.8%) do 

not and 32 (13%) are built on materials that do not have a specific physical location (e.g. print 

editions published in multiple copies). With respect to provenance, only 6 projects (2%) do not 

provide clear information, one project does not apply and the remaining 235 (97%) either 

provide the countries or the cities of provenance. Finally, 121 (50%) provide links to external 

resources and supplementary materials, and 121 (50%) do not. 

Recommendation. For this question, the Catalogue shows that, generally, projects are 

providing contextual information and are thus meeting the expectations expressed by the 

participants. 

 

 

Question 10: How important is the provision of high quality digital images 

upon which the digital edition builds? 

 



 13 

Survey results (M = 4, SD = 1.12). This question found a high consensus, with an aggregated 

140 (57.8%) participants rating the provision of digital images to accompany the edited or 

transcribed texts either important (26.15%) or very important (38.07%). 

Catalogue data. Of the 242 projects under consideration, 135 (55.7%) provide images, 85 

(33.8%) do not and 13 (5.3%) provide only some. The remaining 12 are catalogued as 'not 

provided', a value used for projects published on CD-ROM or behind a pay-wall (inaccessible 

to the authors) to indicate that the information available on the site is inconclusive with regard 

to the provision of images. Of the 135 projects (55.7%) that provide images, 107 (79%) allow 

users to zoom in and out, and 13 (9%) come with text-image linking functionality to enhance 

the reading experience of the document. 

Recommendation. The response rate to this question suggests that many users expect digital 

editions to provide images. The provision of images, however, is often tied to copyright 

regulations enforced by rights holders (e.g. individuals and/or institutions), and these do not 

always facilitate access or employ fair use of their resources in teaching, learning and 

scholarship.  

 

There is the demon of copyright. Some of the most exciting digital edition 

projects focussed on modern authors. It can be difficult enough gaining 

permission for print editions for these; for digital editions, in some notorious 

cases, it has proved impossible. But even for older texts, where there should 

be no copyright issues, there have been problems. Arranging for digital 

photography and reproduction rights is, with very rare exceptions, arduous 

and too often forbiddingly expensive. 

 (Robinson, 2010) 

 

In light of these restrictions, creators of digital editions must endeavour to establish and clear 

rights on the images they plan to use or secure publication permissions before the start of the 

project. If permission is not granted by the image holders and the digital edition proceeds 

without images, creators are strongly advised to publish a visible statement on the project 

website documenting this drawback. The negative publicity to the rights holders will not only 

increase the awareness of the issue but will also clearly communicate to users the imposed 

limitations of the project. 

 
 

Question 11: How important is the availability of advanced functionality 

and browsing, such as indices, filtering, searching and Application 

Programming Interfaces (APIs)? 

 
Survey results (M = 4, SD = 0.92). The great majority of participants (84%) rated the browse 

and search functionalities of digital editions, such as indices, text searches and advanced filters 

either important (34.4%) or very important (50%). Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) 

were included in this category as they provide a similar means of understanding how the 

components of a digital edition come together "under the hood". Four participants (1.8%) rated 

search functionalities as not at all important and the remaining 14% rated them as slightly to 

moderately important. 

Catalogue data. Of the 242 digital editions considered in the Catalogue, 12 (4.9%) come with 

an API, 109 (45%) provide indices, 152 (62%) provide a text or string matching search and 113 

(46%) provide advanced search functionality. A total of 100 (41%) projects provide both string 

search and advanced functionality. 

Recommendation. Given this question's high Median of 4, it is recommended that, where 

applicable, creators provide search functionality (string searches, indices, filters, concordances 

and more advanced options) to help users locate information more easily and, in the case of 

APIs, repurpose and integrate information in other resources. 



 14 

 

 

Question 12: How important is the possibility of consulting a digital 

edition's website in multiple languages other than English? 
Digital editions are often the result of international collaborations and in an effort to maximise 

outreach, some projects localise the website and interface of the digital edition.  

This question sought to elicit the importance of providing multilingual sites, not translations of 

the content of digital editions. 

 
Survey results (M = 2, SD = 1.33). The high SD value of this question indicates that there is 

no clear consensus, with 25% of participants rating multilingual websites or web interfaces as 

not important against an aggregate 28% who judge it between important (17.89%) and very 

important (10.09%). 

These results attest to English as the recognised global lingua franca (Montgomery, 2013; 

Seidlhofer, 2011), and yet a sizable portion of participants expressed the need for a language 

option. Given that the survey did not collect any personal information about participants, it is 

impossible to prove or disprove hypotheses about this result based on the nationality of the 

respondents. Even so, the rating for this question might not necessarily be dictated by the 

respondents' own linguistic abilities (i.e. an English-speaker might not consider multilingual 

sites important as many are published in English anyway) but could also constitute an 

independent evaluation of what they think ought to be done in this regard. Responses may have 

also been influenced by the modern availability of tools to translate web pages (e.g. Google 

Translate's browser extension for Google Chrome 30); despite their limitations as machine-

translators, these tools can, at the very least, help non-natives locate information more easily. 

Catalogue data. Looking at the Catalogue, of the 242 digital editions considered, 210 (86.7%) 

project websites are published in one language only and, of these, 158 (75.2%) are in English. 

The remaining 32 (13.2%) projects are published in two or more languages and all 32 provide 

an English translation or domain. 

Recommendation. In light of the mixed opinions recorded in this survey with regard to 

multilingual sites, and unless this feature is explicitly required by funding agencies, creators 

might want to reconsider providing localised versions of their resources (i.e. translations of the 

user-interface of the edition) or prioritise these differently in project development. While 

localisation opens up resources to a wider audience, the outcome of this survey suggests that 

the resources needed for translations and their maintenance might be better invested in features 

rated as very important and thus more useful to users. 

 

Question 13: How important is the provision of data in Open 

Source/Access formats? 
The Digital Humanities has joined the world movement to make scientific research available 

to the widest possible audience in free and open form (Hamilton and Saunderson, 2017). 

Community experts have addressed the importance of open source and open access models in 

Digital Humanities practice,31 and this survey question sought to hear the opinions of users in 

this regard. The Catalogue of Digital Editions categorises openness into five levels:  

 Proprietary, all material is copyrighted. The source is closed and not reusable by other 

research projects. To access the material, users must pay a subscription fee. 

 Same as above but the subscription is free of charge.  

 Open Access. The texts may be accessed through specific software but the source is 

not accessible. 

                                                        
30 See: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-

translate/aapbdbdomjkkjkaonfhkkikfgjllcleb?hl=en-GB 
31 See, for example, Cohen, D. (2010), Ramsay, S. (2010) and Fitzpatrick, K. (2010). 



 15 

 Open Access and Partial Open Source. Part of the data underlying the digital edition 

(e.g. text but not images) is freely available for access and reuse. 

 Open Access and Open Source. All data underlying the digital edition is freely 

available for access and reuse. 

 
Survey results (M = 5, SD = 0.93). The vast majority of participants (77%) rated the 

importance of Open Source and Open Access formats between important (22%) and very 

important (55%). Only 3 participants rated it as not at all important and 7 participants expressed 

no opinion. 

Catalogue data. Of the 242 digital editions considered in the Catalogue, one project has yet to 

make data available, 32 (12%) are protected by a pay-wall, 9 (3.7%) are accessible through a 

free registration process, 125 (51%) allow data to be accessed but the source is not accessible, 

49 (20%) are both Open Access and Open Source but only part of the source is available for 

download and reuse; finally, 26 (10%) are both Open Access and Open Source making all of 

the source available for download and reuse. Furthermore, only 63 (26%) projects release their 

data under various forms of Creative Commons Licenses. 

 

[...] The major problem I see, in practice, is the strange reluctance lots of TEI 

projects still have to expose their TEI source directly. 

(Lou Burnard, 23 November 2017)32 

 

Recommendation. Given that this question has the highest possible Median of 5, it is strongly 

recommended that creators adhere to Open Source/Access policies to the fullest extent possible, 

and that permissions be made clear on the project website (i.e. which parts of the project can 

be reused and under what conditions). While Creative Commons Licenses are typically used 

for non-software works, there are many other permissive licences to choose from depending on 

the needs of the project, including the Academic Free Licence (AFL), MIT, Apache and GPL 

Licences.33 

 

Question 14: How important is knowing the financial and human resources 

invested in the production of a digital edition (e.g. amount of funding 

obtained, number of researchers/staff involved)? 
Large teams are not necessarily indicative of quality as they may not cover the range of skills 

required to produce a digital edition (Warwick et al., 2008, p. 387). 

 
Survey results (M = 3, SD = 1.17). Although human and financial resources are not necessarily 

indicative of the quality, or lack thereof, of a digital edition, providing some information in this 

regard is considered by almost 31% of participants to be moderately important.  

Catalogue data. Of the 242 digital editions considered in the Catalogue, 223 (92.1%) do not 

provide information concerning the budget or grant size, 12 do, and 7 do not apply as these 

projects are carried out as leisure activities. The Catalogue does not currently record 

information pertaining to the size of the teams behind digital editions, so no numbers are 

available at this time. 

Recommendation. It is recommended that creators of digital editions include information 

about team and grant size in the project description as this helps users gain a better 

understanding of the scope of the project and of how resources influence its development. 
 

                                                        
32 Excerpt taken from a discussion held on the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) mailing list: 

https://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=TEI-L;3604f20d.1711 
33 A comprehensive list of open source licences can be accessed at: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907132405/https://opensource.org/licenses 



 16 

Question 15: How important is the mobile-device compatibility of a digital 

edition (i.e. the possibility of using it on a tablet and/or smartphone)? 
Web technologies are increasingly adapting desktop web browsing to a variety of mobile 

devices in order to make content as widely accessible as possible.
 34

 This survey question sought 

to understand users' views on accessing digital editions from handheld devices.35 The survey 

did not ask whether users make the fullest use of digital editions on their handheld devices, 

preferring instead to focus on access intended as light browsing. 

 
Survey results (M = 3, SD = 1.34). As indicated by the high SD, respondents took a range of 

views: 50 users (22.9%) rated mobile-compatibility as slightly important and another 50 

(22.9%) as important; 36 (16.5%) users rated it as not at all important and 35 (16%) as very 

important. Of the remaining 47 users, 3 expressed no opinion and 44 (20.18%) rated it as 

moderately important. 

Catalogue data. The mobile compatibility of digital editions present in the Catalogue is 

verified using Google's Mobile-Friendly Test 36 . Of the 242 projects considered in the 

Catalogue, 39 projects (16%) passed the Google mobile-friendly test while 203 (83%) did not. 

Recommendation. While the responses recorded by this web-survey with regard to the 

importance of mobile access to digital editions was not conclusive, employing technologies to 

this effect is recommended if creators intend for their project to be more widely visible and 

usable. More importantly, the adherence to web accessibility standards, such as those issued by 

the World Wide Web Consortium37, to champion inclusivity should become an integral part of 

the development process of a digital edition. The findings of a survey entitled "Inclusive Design 

and Dissemination in Digital Scholarly Editions", circulated in July 2017, will tell us more 

about the types of access and web accessibility options of digital editions observed by the 

scholarly community.38 

 

Question 16: How important is the possibility of downloading and reusing 

the data published within a digital edition? 
 

Survey results (M = 5, SD = 0.85). Consonant with Question 13 about Open Source/Access, 

the majority of participants (57%) rated the possibility of downloading and reusing digital 

edition content as very important. One participant did not express an opinion and none of the 

participants rated this feature as not at all important. 

Catalogue data. In its present form, the Catalogue only records the availability of downloads 

where the digital edition is encoded in XML(-TEI). Of the 242 digital editions considered, 132 

(54.5%) are encoded in XML(-TEI) and, of these, 48 (36%) allow users to download the XML(-

TEI) files. Only a handful of projects –the Catalogue does not specify the exact number yet but 

this feature will be added in the near future– provides a single bulk download option for the 

entire digital edition. As expressed by one participant in answer to Question 20 (see further 

below), bulk downloads are desirable and a more efficient means of reusing data. 

Recommendation. These statistics show that the digital editions examined are not adequately 

meeting the download expectations expressed by the participants of this survey. It is therefore 

strongly recommended that creators enable download and preferably in bulk. 

                                                        
34 For instance, the mobile-responsive framework Bootstrap, available at 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907132507/http://getbootstrap.com/, or the Wordpress Content 

Management System, available at: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20170907042719/https://wordpress.org/ 
35 For a study on the dissemination of digital scholarly editions via mobile devices, see (Kelly, 2015). 
36 Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20170907132703/https://search.google.com/test/mobile-

friendly 
37 See: https://web.archive.org/save/_embed/https://www.w3.org/ 
38 Available at: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907132815/https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MCDRMYY 



 17 

 
 

Question 17: What use would you make of the data published in a digital 

edition? 
This question sought to learn more about the types of (re)use some users make of data published 

in digital editions. Teaching was placed first with a frequency of 31%, closely followed by text 

analysis with a rate of 30% and corpus aggregation or building with 21%. The free-text input 

recorded other uses, including research, literary analysis, re-editing and annotation. This 

variety of applications speaks to the value of digital editions not only as research-enabling 

instruments but also as pedagogical tools worthy of being used in the classroom alongside more 

traditional study materials. 

 

Question 18: Which of the following data formats would facilitate your 

studies? 
Many digital editions adhere to XML(-TEI) standards to encode texts. Editors especially 

advocate this practice as a suitable means of marking-up and publishing texts online. Despite 

TEI's claims to interoperability, the fact that the selection and use of an XML(-TEI) tag is based 

on the human interpretation of that tag inherently obstructs an effortless reuse of XML(-TEI) 

files (Schmidt, 2014). It follows that file reuse requires some form of adjustment to fit the new 

context or purpose. In some cases, adjustments can turn into extensive pre-processing tasks in 

order to get the data into a (re)usable format.39 To incentivise, and reduce the complexity of, 

reuse, some creators of digital editions, and of digital textual resources in general, present texts 

in multiple formats.   

 

Survey results (M = 4, SD = 2.12). This multiple-choice survey question was designed to elicit 

participants' views on data formats in digital editions by asking them to state their preference. 

XML(-TEI) tops the list with a frequency of 19.31%, followed by images optimised for the 

web (e.g. PNG and JPG) (17.66%), Plain Text (16.14%), PDF (15.86%), XML (12.97%), TIFF 

images (11.59%) and ePub (4.69%). Free-text replies included Microsoft Word (3 participants), 

CSV (1 participant) and JSON (1 participant). 

 

The results obtained for images contradict Robinson's claim: 

 

Firstly: it appears that rather few readers (indeed, rather often, only the 

editors) actually want to see all the images, all the transcripts, all the 

collations. Traditional print editions acted as filters, straining out all this 

information so that readers did not have to see it: if readers do not want to 

see it, then including all this is no advantage at all. 

(Robinson, 2010) 

 

In this article, Robinson does not provide evidence for these claims but the results of this survey 

either contradict this article or suggest that the provision of high quality images over the past 

seven years has caused a change in user mentality and needs. 

 

Catalogue data. Of the 242 digital editions considered in the Catalogue, 136 (56%) are 

encoded in accordance with XML(-TEI) standards, 86 (35%) do not use XML at all, and 135 

(55%) texts are accompanied by images of the source documents. 

The Catalogue does not list all available data formats for each project, so there are currently no 

numbers with regard to the projects that, for instance, also provide Plain Text (TXT) versions 

                                                        
39 The TEI Wiki dedicates a page to 'Conversion and Preprocessing Tools'. See: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907132852/https://wiki.tei-

c.org/index.php/Category:Conversion_and_preprocessing_tools 



 18 

of the edited texts. This information, planned as a future addition to the Catalogue, would prove 

particularly useful to those who wish to run different analyses on a text, as recently expressed 

in a Digital Medievalist mailing list thread:  

 

[...] is there a way to access the plain text directly, or is there only a search 

interface at the moment? Having direct plain text access can be useful for others 

to do various further analysis on the corpus.  

(Nick White, 29 June 2017) 40 

  

And, again, three years ago in the Digital Humanities Questions & Answers forum: 

 

I'd like to use the available corpora in the German Text Archive 

(http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/download) to train OCR software. For this I 

need these texts as plaintext. All the German Text Archive texts however are all 

TEI P5 tagged. How do I best convert these (hundreds..) of documents into 

plaintext?  

I'm comfortable on the command line and with small shell scripts but I wouldn't 

be able to write an app to make use of a public API to such a service. Ideally I'd 

like to find some tei2text-ish command line tool but the ones I've found in 

googling around and looking on GitHub don't appear (to me, leastways) to be 

suitable for TEI texts. 

        (Arno Bosse, 2015)41 

 
Recommendation. Based on the responses recorded for this question, it is recommended that 

creators provide a marked-up (XML) text for users interested, for example, in close-reading the 

text, as well as a Plain Text (TXT) version of the same text to meet the needs of those who wish 

to perform some form of computer-aided text analysis. 

 

 

Question 19: Can you provide an example of a digital edition that has good 

functionality for your needs? Why and how does it meet your needs? 
The intention of this question was to draw out examples of digital editions that participants feel 

meet their needs (see Appendix A). The majority of participants provided examples of projects 

they consider satisfactory, specifying both the positive and their negative aspects: 

 

Response 7. I've found the search function of the Loeb Online very helpful and 

comprehensive, although obviously it's a pain in the bottom to navigate. 

 

Response 21. Oldbaily [sic], criminocorpus...excellent information retrieval and 

statistical analysis. Download and reuse options could be better. 

 

Digital editions mentioned by multiple respondents are the Perseus Digital Library (seven 

respondents), 42  Electronic Beowulf (five respondents), 43  Folger Digital Texts (four 

                                                        
40 See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170906104222/http://listserv.uleth.ca/pipermail/dm-l/2017-

June/003029.html 
41 This question and all given answers can be viewed here: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20180221090725/http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-i-

best-convert-hundreds-of-tei-p5-documents-to-plaintext 
42 Accessible at: https://web.archive.org/web/20170907132947/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ 
43 Accessible at: http://ebeowulf.uky.edu; the project's record in the Catalogue is available at: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907133128/https://dig-ed-cat.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/editions/detail/145 

http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/download


 19 

respondents), 44  Online Froissart (three respondents), 45  Loeb Classical Library (two 

respondents),46 Corpus Corporum (two respondents),47 e-codices (two respondents)48 and the 

Bayeux Tapestry (two respondents).49 

 

Some participants, 22 in total, stated that no project currently meets their needs: 

 

Response 30. There is none. 

 

Response 42. None are really good. Google Books is almost always bad.  

 

Response 78. I'm not sure I have found one that meets my needs for teaching [...]. 

 

Response 96. I've never had the pleasure to use an edition that fulfilled my ideal. 

 

Six participants (Responses 1, 28, 38, 71, 106, 111) self-publicised their own work (but only 

responses 1 and 71 provided a link to the resource) and there is no way to tell from this survey 

whether other participants did the same in less overt ways. The claims of these six participants 

reinforce the aforementioned LAIRAH findings: expressing appreciation over one's own digital 

edition suggests that the digital edition was built to primarily fulfil the needs and requirements 

of the creator. This line of enquiry deserves further attention to determine the extent to which 

creators of digital editions engage with their target users during the preparation and 

development stages of the project. 

The general impression one can glean from reading all of the answers given to this question is 

users' understanding that digital editions are imperfect tools and that they cannot meet the needs 

of every single user. Although creators may feel reassured by this awareness, the answers given 

in this survey carry a somewhat negative tone, suggesting tolerance towards the issue rather 

than acceptance. 

 
 

Question 20: Is there anything else you would like to tell us about your user 

needs for digital editions that we have not covered here? 
With this question, the authors sought to fill any gaps in the survey by asking participants to 

express concerns or make suggestions with respect to their expectations of digital editions. The 

following were chosen as representative of the full answer-set (see Appendix B): 

 

Response 3. Much more important than fancy browsing, searching capabilities on the digital 

edition's site is the availability of either an API or the full XML-TEI download option [...]. 

 

Response 10. How can we have a digital edition tailored to various needs in one place? 

 

Response 13. The best editions are about providing textual data to researchers, not dictating 

how researchers will read or make use of the data. 

 

Response 14. The ability to download all XML files in an edition - preferably all in one single 

download - would be very useful. Not available in that many editions. 

                                                        
44 Accessible at: http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org 
45 Accessible at: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907133344/https://www.hrionline.ac.uk/onlinefroissart/; the 

project's record in the Catalogue is available at: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907133427/https://dig-ed-cat.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/editions/detail/124 
46 Accessible at: https://web.archive.org/web/20170907133457/https://www.loebclassics.com 
47 Accessible at: http://mlat.uzh.ch/MLS/index.php?lang=0 
48 Accessible at: https://web.archive.org/save/_embed/http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en 
49 Accessible at: http://www.sd-editions.com/bayeux/zoom/#/facsimile%3DBayeux%26panel%3D1 



 20 

 

Response 22. All the and only the essential information (name of the edition, authors, 

publishing institution, publishing date, last update, topic/mission of the edition) should be 

visible on the landing page. No other distraction. 

 

Response 32. Digital editions are not just of interest to and production [sic] by those in 

literature and cognate areas! 

 

Response 38. Clear and open license, provide a manual so theat [sic] users can actually 

RTFM.50 

 

Response 45. Stable (persistent) URLs for resources; clear version system (=defined 

versions/updates of the digital edition). 

 

Response 57. You mention the work done to put the edition together: no-one I should think 

thinks the technical and editorial labour is worth recording but it should be: only by recording 

it as standard will we get this work credited and the resources we need to produce it made 

available. 

 

Response 58. Always, always, always evaluate how accessible your digital edition is for people 

with disabilities. 

 

Response 74. A clear License Statement is the most important thing a digital edition must have. 

Other: Are the Responsible Contacts for the edition available/named? 

 

Response 75. A standard for critical apparatuses which show more than the reading variants 

is desperately needed. 

 

 

Discussion and Recommendations 
How do the digital editions in the Catalogue compare to the responses recorded by this survey? 

The correlation is best captured as a chart, as shown in Figure 1: in this histogram, the x-axis 

lists the features of the digital editions that survey participants were asked to rate; for every 

feature, the histogram provides five coloured bars, each corresponding to a Likert scale point 

('5-important' being 'Very important' and '1-important' 'Not important'). The overlaid red point-

line plots the percentage of digital editions in the Catalogue that possess that particular feature. 

Generally, the bigger the distance between the red points and the tip of their respective coloured 

bars, the better the "performance" of the digital editions with respect to survey responses. For 

example, the highly rated scholarly component of digital editions is present in approximately 

88% of the projects in the Catalogue, showing that digital editions are adequately meeting user 

needs. In contrast, digital editions in the Catalogue are performing badly when it comes to 

documentation, with only 50 projects (approximately 20%) providing both editorial and 

technical documentation, and to access, with only 26 projects giving users full access to the 

source. Moreover, despite receiving the highest rating in the survey, only 36% of digital 

editions in the Catalogue provide download options. 

 

                                                        
50 Abbreviation of "Read The Fucking Manual", a disparaging comment used often on social media, 

see: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170907134134/http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=RTF

M 



 21 

 
Figure 1. In this histogram, the x-axis lists the features of digital editions survey participants were asked 

to rate; for every feature, the histogram provides five bars, each corresponding to a Likert scale point ('5-

important' being 'Very important' and '1-important' 'Not important'). The overlaid red point-line plots the 

percentage of digital editions in the Catalogue that possess that particular feature. 

 
The conclusion one can draw from the results discussed is that the digital editions collected in 

the Catalogue of Digital Editions only adequately cover roughly half of the features examined 

in this study. Creators of these digital editions need not take these results as a denunciation of 

their efforts but, rather, as an invitation to reflect on how their editions can be improved to meet 

user requirements . To promote usefulness and fight the risk of neglect, funding agencies can 

support creators by formalising mandatory requirements and by allocating funds to the 

necessary administrative assistance that each project requires. To this end, the authors propose 

four deliverables –modelled against the LAIRAH recommendations (2008), the responses 

recorded in the present survey as well as the data collected in the Catalogue– that they believe 

should become standardised in grant application forms. These are: 

 

Staff training. Shortcomings of digital editions can sometimes be traced back to the absence 

of a particular skill within the team. For this reason, funders should allocate sufficient resources 

for the training of Research Staff should no candidates with the optimal set of skills be 

available. Training should take place at the beginning but also during the project, depending on 

the employment status of the research team. 

User surveys and contact. Users must have a voice in the development of a digital edition. To 

strengthen their role, funders are advised to make user studies a mandatory deliverable. These 

studies should iteratively evaluate the progress of the project against the needs of the users, so 

that, if possible, any modifications and additions can be factored in during the development of 

the project. Contact details should also be a compulsory requirement to offer users a means of 

communication with creators. 

Maintenance. Dissemination and regular activity have been shown to reduce the neglect of a 

resource (Warwick et al., 2008, p. 389). These, however, can be time-consuming and are 

typically carried out by the researchers themselves, robbing the project of valuable research 

time. To help digital edition teams make the best use of research time, funders should allocate 

resources to hiring dedicated staff –on part-time positions even– to cover the marketing, 

management and administrative obligations of digital edition projects. 



 22 

Documentation. Documentation is key to communicating the quality and value of the work 

assembled in a digital edition. Funders should make detailed documentation a compulsory 

requirement. To help creators provide all of the necessary information, funders may wish to 

adopt a documentation template.  

 

Conclusion 
This paper discusses the results of a web survey entitled "Expectations of Digital (Textual) 

Editions" circulated among the Digital Humanities academic community. The survey sought to 

give users of digital editions a platform to express their needs and expectations of digital 

editions of text. The survey ran for a month and recorded 218 completed responses, the highest 

response rate for a user survey recorded in the field to date. These user responses were 

compared against 242 digital editions collected by the Catalogue of Digital Editions project in 

order to identify meeting and diverging points between what creators of digital editions build 

and what users want. This comparative analysis assessed data both quantitatively and 

qualitatively to give the widest and most detailed picture to date of the two sides to digital 

(scholarly) editing, showing areas where resources can be better deployed, and user experience 

improved, by understanding the tools and features that a use community most desires, alongside 

those that have previously been delivered. 

 

The results obtained from this study feed into previous studies on good practice in building 

Digital Humanities resources and crystallise the diverse range of needs of users of digital 

editions. The impression these results bestow upon the reader is that digital editions are 

imperfect tools unable to meet the expectations of every single user. While creators may feel 

discouraged by these results, one way to alleviate the negative sense of lenience exuding from 

these user responses might be to reconcile data reuse, licensing, image availability, and 

comprehensive documentation –the four most requested features– to the extent possible and to 

more clearly state motivations, objectives and intended audience. 

To help better align digital editions to the needs of users and thus combat the risk of neglect, 

this study puts forward practical recommendations for both creators and funders of digital 

editions. These recommendations should not be considered mandatory but they conform to the 

needs expressed by the 218 participants of this survey.  

The results of this research should not be ignored in the development of digital editions: it has 

signposted new avenues of enquiry along this line of research. For example, a future study 
could explore the extent to which creators of digital editions engage with their target users 

during the preparation and development stages of the project; another study might determine 

or categorise user needs according to user profiles (e.g. researcher versus general public, or 

versus student); another might shift its focus from the Digital Humanities to a wider user-base 

to address digital editions specifically designed and intended for other audiences; or, indeed, 

one may wish to create a survey specifically target at people who feel dissatisfied with existing 

digital editions. These and other possibilities speak to a field of research deserving of greater 

attention. 

 

 

Appendix A: Answers given to Question 19 
The intention of this question was to draw out examples of digital editions that participants feel 

meet their needs. Some sixty digital editions were explicitly mentioned, and, as previously 

discussed, only eight of these were named by Perseus Digital Library (seven respondents), 

Electronic Beowulf (five respondents), Folger Digital Texts (four respondents), Online 

Froissart (three respondents), Loeb Classical Library (two respondents), Corpus Corporum 

(two respondents), e-codices (two respondents) and the Bayeux Tapestry (two respondents). 

Given that not all respondents who singled out these eight digital editions justified their 

answers, it is difficult at this stage to make an informed assessment as to the drivers behind 

their selection. Perseus Digital Library, Folger Digital Texts, Loeb Classical Library and 



 23 

Corpus Corporum all provide a large number of texts, leading one to speculate that quantity 

plays a role in usage; similarly, e-codices provides high quality image reproductions of a large 

number of manuscripts; Bayeux Tapestry, Online Froissart and Electronic Beowulf, on the 

other hand, provide detailed contextual information, suggesting an appreciation for 

comprehensive introductions to the texts at hand.  

 

Some respondents gave examples of digital editions that do not subscribe to the definition of 

digital edition used as reference in this survey (e.g. Response 64. Free Courses On line 

(Coursera, Open University, Stanford, MIT, etc. or Response 113. Yellow 90s Online (The 

Yellow Book)). These answers had no bearing over the analysis described in this paper but can 

be used for spin-off studies aimed at, for instance, better understanding digital editions of non-

literary texts.  

 

Appendix B: Answers given to Question 20 
As previously mentioned, although generally imposing a structure, Question 20 ('Is there 

anything else you would like to tell us about your user needs for digital editions that we have 

not covered here?') was designed to give respondents the opportunity to freely express their 

views. Comments given vary greatly: some corroborate the findings of the analysis of the digital 

editions collected in the Catalogue of Digital Editions, while others flag up issues or dimensions 

of digital editions that are currently overlooked, such as accessibility for people with 

disabilities, citation information and discoverability. The answers collected with this question 

are instrumental in the preparation of user-centric digital editions. 

 

Acknowledgments 
The authors wish to thank all of the participants of the web survey for their key contribution 

toward a better understanding of users in digital (scholarly) editing. We also wish to thank our 

reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions, as well as our collaborators Peter 

Andorfer and Ksenia Zaytseva from the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities for their 

support in preparing this article. 

 

 

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