Digital Research Infrastructure Research Articles

Before Highway Maps: Creating a Digital Research Infrastructure Based on Sixteenth-Century Iberian Places and Roads

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Taking the long view: from e-Science humanities to humanities digital ecosystems

For this paper we have been asked to champion ‘big structures’ as the most suitable technical template for research infrastructures as opposed to ‘lightweight web’ technology. The immediate problem presented is to understand what is meant by ‘technical template’ in this context. Contemporary discourse about technology frequently treats it as a ‘thing’ – it is a device, a piece of hardware, or it is a software component or an application – it is, as Marx argues, “the material component” of the infrastructure. This narrow prism serves to distance technology from the social, economic, political and epistemic relations of which it is a part with the consequence that it may serve to give more power and authority to the purely technological than is welcome, and to fold it into an ‘aura of phantom objectivity’ (Marx 2010). For this paper therefore, we shall attempt to reclaim the original meaning of technology and to frame our argument as a ‘discourse concerned with the mechanic arts’ where the mechanic arts in this context are the digital research infrastructures and technological structures that enable and support humanities research work.

Sustainable Preservation for the Arts and Humanities

DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) aims to support digitally-enabled research across the arts and humanities. The activities and service portfolios are centered around communities to enable transnational, interdisciplinary research. One of the most important goals of DARIAH is the sustainable research data management. Although widely-acknowledged standards and best practices are utilized for essential long-term storage components, offering an interoperable technological solution is challenging due to the heterogeneity of the tools and data. In this article, we analyze these problems, discuss a general concept for long-term storage in DARIAH, and present two implementations of the corresponding preservation services.

Towards an e-Science Environment for Collaborative Filtering Researchers

A plethora of collaborative filtering algorithms have been proposed in related literature. Due to the dynamic and changing parameters of the various application contexts, careful testing and parameterization has to be carried out before an algorithm is finally deployed in a real setting. This paper investigates how a previously proposed tool for simulated testing of collaborative filtering algorithms, called the Collaborative Filtering Simulator (CollaFiS), can be expanded to an e-science environment for researchers so that it runs over a digital research infrastructure. More specifically, a survey of design options for neighborhood-based collaborative filtering systems is carried out in order to illustrate the variety of requirements that need to be met. Then, a number of usage scenarios that could be supported by an e-science environment for collaborative filtering research are presented. Three example dataset cases are used to illustrate how the new version of CollaFiS can support research and experimentation on collaborative filtering algorithms using different data and various parameter options. Overall, this paper showcases how e-science environments and infrastructures may facilitate the research activities of people working on recommender systems.Request access from your librarian to read this article's full text.

Scaling Up Collaboration Online: Toward a Collaboratory for Research on Canadian Writing

This article asks researchers of Canadian writing to reflect on collaboration as increasingly crucial to how we do our work in the context of digital environments that increasingly shape our work through their tools and resources. Scholars are in a position to help address major gaps in both online cultural content and digital infrastructure in Canada, both of which are vital to the continuing study of literature. Given the lack of a national digitization initiative and increasing government cuts, the need for high-quality Canadian web content and the interests of scholars in Canadian writing converge. The article describes the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory as one attempt to addressing these gaps, while also outlining the substantial challenges—which are finally cultural rather than technical—associated with developing incentives to collaboration, fostering adherence to best practices, and demonstrating value in virtual research environments and the work that supports them. However, if emerging digital research infrastructures can foster collaboration, open access, and sustainability, they will make a historical difference to the cultural infrastructure and cultural memory of Canada.

What are Research Infrastructures?

This paper reflects on what research infrastructures are, suggesting that there are two dominant themes – one arising from the funding bodies postulating that research infrastructure development offers unprecedented opportunities to drive forward that which is new, which is innovative, and which drives competition and success; the other which suggests that infrastructure is subordinate, a substrate that supports the real work of research, and which becomes a thing that shifts into the background and is invisible. This paper argues that neither of these positions is wholly true or particularly helpful as we move to invest significant sums of money in digital research infrastructures. Instead, I propose that we need to view infrastructure as a material and experiential presence that is embedded in the practices and experience of research, which builds on and enhances that which already exists, that unites scholars with archivists, librarians, and museum curators, and that also finds a place for the amateur. Finally, and most importantly, I wish to argue that we must foreground the ‘research’ in ‘research infrastructures’. concentrating less on the component parts of infrastructure and instead focusing on its relationship to research practices.

An Approach to Analyzing Working Practices of Research Communities in the Humanities

The need for a firm understanding of the working practices of researchers in the humanities emerges as a prerequisite for the development of effective digital research infrastructures. This paper will focus on the rationale behind the design and implementation of two related studies conducted in the context of two European e-Infrastructures projects, DARIAH and EHRI. Within DARIAH the challenge involved conducting, analysing and understanding research practices of arts and humanities researchers, a largely ill-defined community encompassing a wide spectrum of disciplines. Each of them deals with a variety of objects employing an extensive number of methods. In the context of EHRI, the challenge is slightly different, due to the involvement of a better-defined research community. Holocaust researchers share well-identified objects, common ground on methods, and handle similar setbacks. In this paper we discuss the approach adopted for designing and implementing qualitative user-centric studies aimed at capturing activities, methods, and types of information objects employed by researchers grounded in identified research goals and questions. It addresses both generic and specific entities and processes, and supports the understanding of researchers’ working practices in settings as diverse and wide as DARIAH, or as specialized as EHRI. The outcomes of the analysis of working practices are used in determining user requirements for digital infrastructures to serve the respective research communities.

CENDARI's Grand Challenges: Building, Contextualising and Sustaining a New Knowledge Infrastructure

In its widest sense, infrastructure allows us as finite individuals to achieve beyond our individual capacity to know, to do, to see. But even within the narrower context of research infrastructures, broad and diverse definitions exist of how such an infrastructure should deliver these enhancements in knowledge and perspective. The Collaborative EuropeaN Digital Archival Research Infrastructure (CENDARI) project was launched in 2012 to address some of the gaps in provision for digital historical research, building on a long tradition of work in libraries, archives, digital humanities research centres and other research infrastructures. What distinguishes CENDARI, however, is its focus on what the project team has identified as the ‘grand challenges’ for each of its contributing stakeholder groups: collections experts based in libraries and archives, historians of the medieval and modern periods, and e-Scientists. This ethos, combined with its close relationship at European level to DARIAH, the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities, has instigated a unique and fruitful approach to supporting historical research with digital resources, tools and spaces.

ARIADNE: Advanced Research Infrastructures for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe

Archaeologists regularly deal with large and diverse data sets, which are frequently the only record of excavated and destroyed archaeological sites. They need digital research infrastructures to preserve and provide access to this fragile digital data and to develop tools to manipulate and analyse it. Digital data is also increasing in quantity and size, and is often born digital, but there is a high degree of fragmentation and difficulty of accessing data in an integrated way. There is a small but growing number of national discipline-specific research infrastructures, and there have been a few project based attempts to provide European exemplars. This paper describes ARIADNE, a new research infrastructure for archaeologists, funded by the European Commission. It discusses some of the major issues and challenges and introduces some of the activities that ARIADNE partners will undertake. Given the transnational nature of many archaeological research questions, there is a clear value-added for organising research infrastructures in archaeology at a European level.

The Evolution of the Text Encoding Initiative: From Research Project to Research Infrastructure

It is twenty-five years since the Text Encoding Initiative was first launched as a research project following an international conference funded by the US National Endowment for the Humanities. This article describes some key stages in its subsequent evolution from research project into research infrastructure. The TEI's changing nature, we suggest, is partly a consequence of its close and highly responsive relation with an active user community, which may also explain both its longevity and its effectiveness as a part of the digital humanities research infrastructure.

The Finnish National Digital Library: a national service is developed in collaboration with a network of libraries, archives and museums

The National Digital Library (NDL), as a project, aims to ensure Finnish cultural and scientific electronic materials are managed to a high standard, are easily accessible and securely preserved well into the future. The NDL is one of the key pieces of digital research and cultural infrastructure under construction in Finland. The National Library Finland (NLF) is responsible for the development of the public interface service Finna, which is part of the NDL and will also act as the national aggregator for Europeana. The NLF has decided to develop this comprehensive service based on open source components, and the development of the software is in the hands of experienced developers. In terms of challenges, the greatest challenge has to be constructing and co-ordinating the mechanisms to enable organizations' participation.

DARIAH(-DE): Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities — Concepts and Perspectives

DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) is part of the European Strategy on Research Infrastructures. Among 38 projects originally on this roadmap, DARIAH is one of two projects addressing social sciences and humanities. According to its self-conception and its political mandate DARIAH has the mission to enhance and support digitally-enabled research across the humanities and arts. DARIAH aims to develop and maintain an infrastructure in support of ICT-based research practices. One main distinguishing aspect of DARIAH is that it is not focusing on one application domain but especially addresses the support of interdisciplinary research in the humanities and arts. The present paper first gives an overview on DARIAH as a whole and then focuses on the important aspect of technical, syntactic and semantic interoperability. Important aspects in this respect are metadata registries and crosswalk definitions allowing for meaningful cross-collection and inter-collection services and analysis.

Implementing Open Access: Policy Case Studies

Implementing open access is a tough job. Legitimate authority, sufficient resources and the right timing are crucial. Pioneers, role models and flagship institutions all have faced considerable challenges in meeting their own aims and achieving a recognized success. Professionals charged with implementing policy typically need several years to accomplish significant progress. Many institutions adopting open access policies probably need to do more, much more, if the commitment to open access is to be meaningful. A first generation of open access policy development and implementation is coming to a close. It is thus possible to begin evaluation. Evaluating implementation establishes evidence, enables reflection, and may foster the emergence of a second generation of open access policies. This study is based on a small number of cases, examining the implementation of open access around the world. Some of the pioneer institutions with open access mandates have been included, as well as some newer cases. The emergence of the new stakeholders in publishing is examined, such as digital repositories, research funders and research organisations. Because this is a groundbreaking study, no claim is made that the results are representative. The emphasis is on variety and on defining a methodological standard. Each case is reconstructed individually on the basis of public documents and background information, and supported by interviews with professionals responsible for open access implementation. Implementation is typically based on targeting researchers as authors. Indeed, the author is pivotal to any open access solution. This is the ‘tertium comparationis’ that facilitates an examination of the similarities and differences across instances in an effort to build a broader policy research agenda. In a final section, open access is placed in the wider context of the evolution of digital scholarship. This clarifies how published research results are destined to become a key component of digital research infrastructures that provide inputs and outputs for research, teaching and learning in real time. The ten cases examined in detail are: - Refining green open access policy: Queensland University of Technology (September 2003) - Refining policy to foster deposit: University of Zurich (July 2005) - National platform, open collection, decentralized policy: the HAL platform (June-October 2006) - Maximising a funder’s impact: The Wellcome Trust (October 2006) - Implementing open access as a digital infrastructure: UK PMC (January 2007) - Learning from global research infrastructure: SCOAP3 (April 2007) - Linking public access to open data: Howard Hughes Medical Institute (January 2008) - Open access to all publications, internationally: Austrian Science Fund (FWF, March 2008) - One policy, sixty publication strategies: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (July 2008) - Open Access complements the Research Information System: The University of Pretoria (May 2009)

Methodological commons: arts and humanities e-Science fundamentals

The application of e-Science technologies to disciplines in the arts and humanities raises major questions as to how those technologies can be most usefully exploited, what tools and infrastructures are needed for that exploitation, and what new research approaches can be generated. This paper reviews a number of activities in the UK and Europe in the last 5 years which have sought to address these questions through processes of experimentation and targeted infrastructure development. In the UK, the AHeSSC (Arts and Humanities e-Science Support Centre) has played a coordinating role for seven projects funded by the Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative. In Europe, DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) has sought to develop a deeper understanding of research information and communication in the arts and humanities, and to inform the development of e-infrastructures accordingly. Both sets of activity have indicated a common requirement: to construct a framework which consistently describes the methods and functions of scholarly activity which underlie digital arts and humanities research, and the relationships between them. Such a 'methodological commons' has been formulated in the field of the digital humanities. This paper describes the application of this approach to arts and humanities e-Science, with reference to the early work of DARIAH and AHeSSC.