Data-First Manifesto: Shifting Priorities in Scholarly Communications

In October 2015, participants in a session at the Vanderbilt THATCamp drafted a ‘data-first’ manifesto, calling for prioritizing data curation over interface design in digital scholarship projects and for rethinking how to foster scholarly communication in the performance of digital scholarship. This paper recounts the origins of the manifesto, explicates its four sets of ordered preferences, and considers how implementing these shifts in priorities might transform scholarly communications in the field of digital scholarship.