2025/03/17 by Monee Amin, Meredith Trubitt, Avital Y. O’Glasser +1 · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Social Media in Health Education #Radio, Podcasts, and Digital Media #Digital Humanities and Scholarship
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/jhm.70027
openalex publication_date 2025/03/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Digital scholarship is ubiquitous in medicine. Healthcare workers, including hospitalists, consume it through a variety of mediums including audio, video, and data visualization. Many physicians disseminate digital scholarship through social media. Despite existing guidelines for the assessment of digital scholarship, academic medical centers (AMCs) often fail to incorporate and adjudicate digital media-based scholarship into accepted criteria for academic promotion. In this perspective, we identify an opportunity for AMCs to implement standardized criteria for promotion opportunities regardless of an individuals’ scholarship medium. Traditional scholarship is the standard for academic promotion in the scientific community. Traditional dissemination of scholarly work (discovery, teaching, application, or integration) is defined as publication in a peer-reviewed journal.1 Promotion and Tenure (P&T) committees typically lean on objective measures to arbitrate the influence of traditional scholarship (e.g., journal impact factor, number of citations, H-index, grant funding).1 Publications are presented in similar forms and have an accepted evaluation standard, making traditional scholarship—despite its limitations as a measure of impact—a familiar and comfortable medium for P&T committees.2 In contrast, digital scholarship is more challenging to evaluate due to the wide variety of media and its innate differences from traditional scholarship, despite some of the same foundations and limitations.3 Critics of digital scholarship often raise concerns regarding lack of validated assessment tools, metrics, measurement of impact, and perceived value of the scholarly work. However, objective measurements to define and quantify the reach of scholarly work exist; examples include Altmetric score, downloads, listens, views, engagement.2 One proposed framework for consideration of digital work as scholarship is that it meets four requirements: the work must (1) be original; (2) advance the field; (3) be archivable and disseminated; and (4) be available for comment, feedback, and discussion.3 This framework can guide leaders in academic medicine and academic societies as they inform and shape what qualifies as traditional and digital scholarly work. A specific concern for digital scholarship is the lack of transparent peer review processes for the content. Quality is important in assessing any scholarship, regardless of medium, as it allows the public to place their faith in the information and in the institutions supporting the work to benefit the public good. As the proposed above, valid digital scholarship should contribute meaningfully and enduringly to the field.4 However, the medium in which the information is published does not define the quality of the work,1 and peer review and quality assessments for digital scholarship can guide reviewers and P&T committees.5, 6 The case for equitable consideration of digital scholarship is not new, but adoption of specific digital scholarship criteria into P&T processes has been slow. This is explained by cultural inertia—the resistance to change due to ingrained beliefs, values, and practices within an organization.7 Despite the increasing use of digital media for learning in medicine, most (n = 136, 91.9%) institutions do not explicitly acknowledge digital work in promotion guidelines.8 To build a robust approach to digital scholarship, responsibilities must be redefined and distributed among institutions, institutional sponsors, reviewers, and candidates (Figure 1). Institutional P&T guidelines for promotion should be clearly articulated and in written form. Incorporating the framework described above to create discrete requirements regarding digital scholarship decreases ambiguity and allows candidates engaged in this type of scholarship to prepare accordingly. Institutions should avoid “shadow” or unwritten rules about scholarship to prevent confusion (e.g., assigning weight to authorship ordinals or certain types of peer-reviewed publications). Institutions also should consider accepting digital forms of curriculum vitae (CV), allowing candidates to incorporate hyperlinks to their original digital scholarship for ease of review. The danger of discrete guidelines is that rigid interpretation may not allow for consideration of new forms of scholarship as technological advances outpace policy changes. In a sense, the entire approach to digital scholarship must become more generative.4 The primary responsibility of the P&T committee when faced with a candidate who has built their career on digital scholarship is to look at the candidate's CV and personal statement more closely. It is imperative to recognize the validity of scholarly work within the accepted framework, regardless of the medium; digital scholarship should not be valued less than nondigital forms of scholarship. It is the P&T committee's responsibility to review the scholarly work in the form in which it is created and published rather than request it in an alternate form. For example, if the published scholarly work is in podcast or video form, a request to provide a monographic document that describes the scholarly work places the candidate and the scholarly work at a disadvantage. Institutions who fully incorporate a generative framework for digital scholarship provide more opportunities for academic advancement. A fundamental supporter for the candidate is the institutional sponsor (e.g., division or departmental chair supporting the candidate's promotion application, or internal letter or recommendation writer). Institutional sponsors who understand the work and the medium can advocate for the candidate or provide guidance if the work does not meet the institutional promotion criteria. This includes understanding and evaluating the impact and reach of the digital scholarship as well as the effort and content expertise it took to produce and disseminate it. Utilizing P&T guidelines from the institution as well as external data, the institutional sponsor can be a crucial ally in affirming the merit of the candidate's professional body of contributions. The institutional sponsor can also be a powerful voice in clearly delineating that the candidate's digital work meets or exceeds traditional criteria. The institutional sponsor should be aware of the beneficial impact of the body of work at and beyond the institution. Additionally, if there is institutional resistance to accepting digital scholarship, the institutional sponsor has the responsibility to escalate concerns about equity and transparency to institutional leaders and P&T committees. Other foundational supporters for digital scholars are reviewers who are well-versed in the modality of the scholarship for the candidate. The responsibility for identifying reviewers is shared among the institution, institutional sponsor, and candidate. For example, the reviewer should have a clear understanding of the podcasting process when reviewing a podcast. Similarly, the reviewer should know how to evaluate the material and the candidate's metrics. In the event someone is reviewing a packet but does not have the experience in the candidate's specific area of digital scholarship, the reviewer can rely on existing frameworks outlined in the institutional promotion guidelines and use adaptive expertise to shift from one digital medium to another. In preparing their CV, the candidate should list all efforts that qualify as valid digital scholarship as defined by the institutional framework. Additionally, they should provide objective data regarding the audience reach. For example, with podcasts, statistics regarding downloads and/or listens are important. For social media posts, metrics regarding shares and total views can provide similar insight into impact. In addition to the raw data, an explanation for why particular numbers are shared can help illustrate the extent of influence digital work. Including hyperlinks for quick access to work can help, but this only works if the reviewers and P&T committees access the digital CV. Faculty seeking promotion can craft their personal statement in a way that informs P&T committees about their chosen medium and impact of their digital scholarship. The onus falls on the candidate to be precise in the description of the scholarship process. As nondigital scholarship has been the foundation of the promotion process, it is imperative to acknowledge the validity of digital scholarship. We recommend providing the highest degree of granularity to ensure that reviewers have a clear understanding of the substantial work required for digital scholarship. At a minimum, the following details should be included in either the CV or the personal statement: descriptions of the topic selection, formulations of learning objectives, review of the literature, content creation (depending on modality, this may involve additional writing, recording, graphic designing, etc.), peer review process before content is released, and peer review process during the postpublication period. The case for digital scholarship is strong and not new. Existing policies and criteria are maladapted to the current scholarly environment and not conducive to incorporating innovative and ever-changing forms of media. Adapting or overhauling current P&T policies and procedures to be clear in the definition of scholarship but flexible in the media in which the scholarship is created and published will ensure that P&T process to operate with high fidelity while remaining generative enough to evolve with the dynamic digital landscape. The authors have nothing to report. Michelle Brooks serves as a Deputy Editor for Digital Media at the Journal of Hospital Medicine.