A Digital Registry for Archaeological Find Spots and Excavation Documentation in IANUS

Grey literature (site notebooks, reports etc.) and research data in archaeology are invaluable sources of information currently lacking a central reference registry in Germany. This paper discusses requirements and the underlying data model of a registry to be developed for find spots and archaeological excavation data within the IANUS project at the German Archaeological Institute. This registry is to collect information on archaeological investigations data for a finding aid service. The focus for this registry will be based on the collection of metadata about primary data and grey literature, not on secondary data or on publications. Starting with the acquisition of basic metadata needs drawn from the IANUS mission and project charter. A review of already existing projects and initiatives in this field (EDNA, tDAR, ADS, Open Context) provides more details about which information should be captured during a registration of research data for a long term digital preservation archive. Finally recommendations for the data model of this registry are drawn from the evaluation of existing generic and archaeology-specific metadata standards (Dublin Core, EDM, LIDO, ADeX, CARARE)

Preparing DARIAH

In this paper, a preparatory project for an integrated European research infrastructure in the humanities is presented. This project, Preparing for the construction of the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities - or Preparing DARIAH for short, is part of the ESFRI e-infrastructures programme and supports the emergence of a new collaborative framework in which researchers are able to maximise the impact of their work on the international stage and aims at providing the foundations for the timely construction of the infrastructure requisite for the arts, humanities and cultural heritage communities in the digital age. DARIAH uses an interdisciplinary approach and involves tackling a number of interrelated issues such as strategic, organisational, financial, technical and conceptual in order to facilitate long-term access to and use of all European humanities and cultural heritage information for the purposes of enhancing and expanding research, thereby increasing our knowledge and understanding of our histories, heritage, languages and cultures. The DARIAH network will act as a place where the incubation of new ideas and ways of working can be facilitated and developed, and then transitioned into established organisations thus ensuring long-term sustainability and stability and the integration of these methods and techniques into everyday research practice. DARIAH will support research practitioners at all stages in the research process, and at differing levels of sophistication, from beginners through to those employing advanced techniques and methodologies

D6.3 Policy Recommendations and Strategy Report

The European Commission aims to develop a more sustainable environment for research infrastructures ecosystem, and to ensure that the benefits and impacts are widely perceived by research communities and led to research excellence. This vision is reflected in a range of international and European documents. Recent work conducted by the OECD and the European Commission, particularly by ESFRI and e-IRG, have stated the need to make structural changes in the EU framework for research infrastructures (RIs). In line with this strategic vision, DARIAH intends to establish itself as a sustainable research infrastructure. DESIR (DARIAH ERIC Sustainability Refined) work package 6 TRUST contributes to DARIAH’s long-term sustainability by measuring acceptance and impact of DARIAH in new cross-disciplinary DARIAH communities and core groups. This was the base to define the theoretical and methodological framework that supported the research here presented. Therefore, this report focuses on the development of recommendations and strategies to support and increase confidence in DARIAH services and infrastructure, aiming at contributing to a major DESIR goal, which is to enlarge DARIAH by engaging new cross-disciplinary communities and considering their specific requirements. The proposed recommendations could set the basis for a broader debate within the DARIAH and RIs landscape on the actions to be taken at all decision levels in order to address a vision for longer-term sustainable RI. So, this report intends to be a policy document that aims at inspiring the future path of DARIAH, contributing to its sustainability and to fulfil the mission for which it was created. The recommendations stem from the analytical work developed from the contributions of multiple sources of information: an academically-driven multi-country survey (see D6.2); 33 qualitative interviews in three different countries; a workshop with DARIAH national coordinators held in Warsaw; contributions from DESIR partners who lead other work projects within the project; and DESIR Winter School “Shaping New Approaches to Data Management in Arts and Humanities”. After defining the entire set of recommendations, they were grouped according to three main strategic frameworks (sustainability, scope and DARIAH Strategic Plan) and visually displayed in a “Recommendations & Community Engagement Tool” (https://dariah.peopleware.pt), an open platform that supports DARIAH, strengthening the link with arts and humanities communities.The new DARIAH Strategic Plan for the next seven years, which will be followed by the publication of a Strategic Action Plan, represents a big opportunity to address sustainability, both as a conceptual level and in terms of organizational and operational configuration. Therefore, the main findings are summarized in seven key recommendations, linked with the strategic pillars of the recent published DARIAH Strategic Plan:1. Promote research excellence with inclusive, collaborative, bureaucracy free and community-driven approach.2. Ensure the integration of tools, services, data and resources within DARIAH community and with other Research Infrastructures (e.g. by gathering them on a platform such as the Marketplace).3. Foster a collaborative learning environment and anticipate the skills of the future through a joint strategy for education and training (e.g. DARIAH-CAMPUS).4. Establish a flexible, participatory and effective governance model with a clear and sustainable business plan.5. Strengthen DARIAH’s representation in European and International policy arena, expanding its visibility and cooperation outside EU borders.6. Broaden and extend DARIAH’s role, action and benefits towards the strengthening of scientific citizenship in Europe.7. Set up means for monitoring and bringing communities together, while respecting diversity on an institutional, scientific, disciplinary and methodological level.The work developed in the DESIR project - particularly this set of recommendations - could be a contribution to foster the implementation of guidelines and short and long-term actions to improve DARIAH’s sustainability and firmly establish it as a long-term leader and partner within arts and humanities communities

Opening up traditional cultural knowledge by means of European infrastructures: the examples of exploreAT! & EGI Engage

The rapid development of new digital tools and infrastructures in recent years and their application to a variety of disciplines has transformed how we store, access and retrieve information available to us. This has also shaped the ways how knowledge in a diverse cultural context is presented, used and re-used. The exploreAT! project builds upon not only Austrian, but also European cultural identity from the aspect of language, in particular dialects. Unlike standard languages, dialects are in times of globalization under considerable threat of diminishing, and this ultimately poses a risk to the intangible record that is language and through which a history of tangible culture is expressed. In this paper we elaborate on the possibilities digital means and the infrastructure and services of the EGI-Engage project offer in revealing and giving access to unique traditional cultural knowledge contained in a non-standard language resource on the example of the Bavarian dialects in Austria (DBÖ). Digital tools and services allow our heterogeneous corpus of data to be virtually exploited and preserved. The flexibility of the internet allow these data to become not only visible, but searchable and extractable. Through the digitization efforts, and use of European infrastructures the hidden cultural narratives within the data can be uncovered, enriched and shared for the benefit of knowledge society

EOSC Synergy WP6: Initial review of systems, initiatives and development of selection criteria of the online learning/training platforms and initiatives

This report describes a review of possible learning platforms and tools, and relevant previous and current projects and initiatives in the area of Open Science and EOSC training and education. It also includes reflections on the criteria we will use to select the platform and tools for the EOSC-Synergy project.European Commission. The report is a deliverable of EOSC-synergy project (INFRAEOSC-05(b)), Grant agreement ID: 857647.Peer reviewe

Building Social Media Observatories for Monitoring Online Opinion Dynamics

Social media house a trove of relevant information for the study of online opinion dynamics. However, harvesting and analyzing the sheer overload of data that is produced by these media poses immense challenges to journalists, researchers, activists, policy makers, and concerned citizens. To mitigate this situation, this article discusses the creation of (social) media observatories: platforms that enable users to capture the complexities of social behavior, in particular the alignment and misalignment of opinions, through computational analyses of digital media data. The article positions the concept of "observatories" for social media monitoring among ongoing methodological developments in the computational social sciences and humanities and proceeds to discuss the technological innovations and design choices behind social media observatories currently under development for the study of opinions related to cultural and societal issues in European spaces. Notable attention is devoted to the construction of Penelope: an open, web-services-based infrastructure that allows different user groups to consult and contribute digital tools and observatories that suit their analytical needs. The potential and the limitations of this approach are discussed on the basis of a climate change opinion observatory that implements text analysis tools to study opinion dynamics concerning themes such as global warming. Throughout, the article explicitly acknowledges and addresses potential risks of the machine-guided and human-incentivized study of opinion dynamics. Concluding remarks are devoted to a synthesis of the ethical and epistemological implications of the exercise of positioning observatories in contemporary information spaces and to an examination of future pathways for the development of social media observatories