Testing and Refining Scholarly Communications Workflows and Work Habits for the Digital Age: Three Years of the Greenhouse Studios Experiment

Abstract:Greenhouse Studios | Scholarly Communications Design at UConn is a shared venture of the School of Fine Arts, University Library, and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Greenhouse Studios' core research mission is the development of workflows that bring diverse interdisciplinary teams together to create works of digital and non-traditional scholarship while also cultivating a collaborative work culture. This article summarizes the implementation, assessment, and refinement of those workflows, which together constitute Greenhouse Studios' design-based, inquiry-driven, collaboration-first model of scholarly production. Findings from this research, undertaken with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, include modifications to Greenhouse Studios' operations, specifically to the terminology used in its design-process model, the composition of team personnel, approaches to project management, tactics to foster divergent thinking, and our relationships to press partners.