HumaReC, a Swiss National Foundation project, aims to test a new publication process: continuous data publishing. This model requires research partnerships throughout the process, from the original document source to the publisher and making the data available as soon as it is produced. The HumaReC object of study is a trilingual, 12th century, New Testament manuscript.
https://ercim-news.ercim.eu/images/stories/EN111/EN111-web.pd

Chasapi, Anastasia

Clivaz, Claire

Schulthess, Sara

English

Serveur académique lausannois

ERCIM NEWS 111   October 2017 21HumaReC: Continuous Data Publishing in the Humanitiesby Claire Clivaz, Sara Schulthess and Anastasia Chasapi (SIB)HumaReC, a Swiss National Foundation project, aims to test a new model of digital researchpartnership: from original document source to publisher. Its object of study is a trilingual, 12thcentury, New Testament manuscript, which is used by HumaReC to test continuous data publishing.HumaReC [L1] is a Vital-DH@Vital-ITproject funded by the Swiss NationalFoundation. Under the leadership ofClaire Clivaz, it started in October 2016and has been running for two years. Theproject is based at Vital-IT (Lausanne,CH), under the guidance of group leaderIoannis Xenarios from the SwissInstitute of Bioinformatics. The team iscomposed of a mixture of humanitiesand computing scholars; SaraSchulthess is the main researcher. The aim of HumaReC is to investigatehow humanities research is reshapedand transformed by the digital rhythmof data production and publication; italso aims to establish the best practicesfor Digital Humanities research. As atest-case, the study is focussed on aunique, trilingual New Testament man-uscript: Marciana Gr. Z. 11 (379),written in Greek, Latin and Arabic. Inthe spirit of the OA2020 initiative [L4],continuous data publishing is beingtested in partnership with all theresearch network stakeholders: theMarciana library (Venice, Italy), theEdition Visualization Technology(EVT) [L2], the Transkribus [L3]research teams, and the publisher Brill. Rhythm is a central notion in the struc-ture of HumaReC and we have chosenthis key-concept, based notably onMeschonnic analysis [1], to observe thechanges happening in digital humanitiesresearch which has been premised onprinted culture for a long time. A two tothree year research project in humani-ties has traditionally been characterisedby the writing, editing and publicationof a final, printed book, often delayed toa certain date after the end of theproject. This delay was even consideredproof of authentic, high-level researchin humanities, certified by an estab-lished book series. The digital transitionis creating a completely new researchparadigm in part due to the publishingof formats such as videos, short mes-sages or draft papers, social media andblogs, all before the research is evencompleted and peer-reviewed. How is itpossible to develop certified and contin-uous data publishing digital research inthe humanities?As the project’s first step, a virtualresearch environment was created forHumaReC, allowing the researchprocess and results to be made continu-ously available. It provides a manu-script viewer in fully open access thatincludes quality images of the manu-script and three columns of transcrip-tions (see Illustrations below). Themanuscript viewer is based on EVTopen source technology and is a devel-opment of a previous project’s viewer[2]. The improved viewer offers addi-tional features such as linking betweentext and image. In addition to this, anannotation system will allow users todirectly comment on the manuscriptviewer. Secondly, Transkribus, aWith the maturation of a base model,creation of a declarative mapping tooland language, a generalising queryfunction and a model and method formanaging integration processes, webelieve that the key elements formeeting these challenges now lie inplace.Links:[L1] http://www.cidoc-crm.org/ [L2] http://www.researchspace.org/[L3] http://www.parthenos-project.eu/ References:[1] ISO: ISO 21127: 2014, Informationand documentation – a referenceontology for the interchange ofcultural heritage information, 2ndedn., 2014.[2] N. Minadakis, Y. et al.: “X3MLFramework: An effective suite forsupporting data mappings, Extending.Proceedings of the Workshop onExtending, Mapping and Focusingthe CRM co-located with 19thInternational Conference on Theoryand Practice of Digital Libraries(2015), Poznań, Poland, September17, 2015”, CEUR WorkshopProceedings 1656, 1-12, 2016.[3] K. Tzompanaki & M. Doerr:Fundamental Categories andRelationships for Intuitive queryingCIDOC-CRM based repositories,Technical Report, 2012.Please contact:George BrusekerCentre for Cultural Informatics ICS-FORTH, Greecebruseker@ics.forth.grFigure1:Manuscriptviewerf.156r©MarcianaLibraryallrightsreserved.ERCIM NEWS 111   October 201722Special Theme: Digital Humanities Handwritten Text Recognition tool, willalso be tested by HumaReC: a certainnumber of words transcribed by handallows a learning machine to be trainedto recognise specific writing in a manu-script. The results are forthcoming: wewill be able to compare the time takenby purely hand transcription withresults produced by a human/machineteam.Finally, three publication formats werechosen for the continuous disseminationof the data:• The virtual research environmentitself; it received an ISSN (2504-5075)from the Swiss National Library: allthe published material associated withthe project can be referred to with thisnumber. An international editorialboard is providing project feedbackand input on its research results.• The research blog is an importantinteractive continuous publishingprocess. We regularly update the blogabout the development of the projectand the research results. We alsoencourage discussions by being pres-ent on social media (Facebook andTwitter).• The web-book, continuously writtenin open access, summarises theresearch in a long, structured text,similar to a conventional monographbut related to the data. It is producedin partnership with the publisherBrill. At the end of the project, it willbe peer-reviewed, and hopefully pub-lished with its own ISSN by Brill.We are confident that HumaReC willestablish a new research and publishingmodel, including potential commercialdevelopments for all interested pub-lishers.AcknowledgementMany thanks to Harley Edwards for hisEnglish proof-reading, to the Marcianalibrary for the image copyright, to thereviewers for their useful remarks, andto Martial Sankar and Ioannis Xenariosfor their collaboration and support inour Vital-DH projects@Vital-IT (SIB).Links:[L1] https://humarec.org;http://p3.snf.ch/project-169869[L2] http://evt.labcd.unipi.it/[L3] http://transkribus.eu[L4] http://oa2020.orgReferences:[1] C. Clivaz et al.: “Editing NewTestament Arabic Manuscripts in a TEI-base: fostering close reading in DigitalHumanities”, JDMDH 3700, 2017. [2] H. Meschonnic: “Critique durythme. Anthropologie historique dulangage”, 1982.Please contact: Claire Clivaz, Swiss Institute ofBioinformatics, Switzerland,+41216924060, claire.clivaz@sib.swissPARTHENOS [L1] is a Horizon 2020project funded by the EuropeanCommission that aims at strengtheningthe cohesion of research in the broadsector of linguistic studies, cultural her-itage, history, archaeology and relatedfields through a thematic cluster ofEuropean research infrastructures.PARTHENOS is building a cross-disci-plinary virtual environment to enableresearchers in the humanities to haveaccess to data, tools and services basedon common policies, guidelines andstandards. The project is built aroundtwo European Research InfrastructureConsortia (ERICs) from the humanitiesand arts sector: DARIAH [L2] (researchbased on digital humanities) andCLARIN [L3] (research based on lan-guage data), along with ARIADNE [L4](digital archaeological research infra-structure), EHRI [L5] (EuropeanHolocaust research infrastructure),CENDARI [L6] (digital research infra-structure for historical research),CHARISMA [L7] and IPERION-CH[L8] (EU projects on heritage science)and involves all the relevant integratingactivities projects. Since 2016, the Horizon 2020Programme has produced guidelines onFAIR data management [L9] to helpHorizon 2020 beneficiaries make theirresearch data findable, accessible, inter-operable and reusable (FAIR) [L10].Funded projects are requested to deliveran implementation of DMP which aimsto improve and maximise access to andreuse of research data generated by theprojects. This is in line withCommission’s policy actions on openscience to reinforce the EU’s politicalpriority of fostering knowledge circula-tion. Open science is in practice about“sharing knowledge as early as practi-cally possible in the discovery process”and because DMPs gather informationabout what data will be created andhow, and outline the plans for sharingand preservation, specifying the natureof the data and any restrictions that mayneed to be applied, these plans ensurethat research data is secure and well-maintained during a project andbeyond, when it might be shared withothers. DMPs are key elements toknowledge discovery and innovationand to subsequent data and knowledgeintegration and reuse.Special attention has been paid to thedevelopment of a PARTHENOS datamanagement plan which builds on theHorizon2020 DMP template. This hasresulted in a template (draft) whichaims to address the domain-specificprocedures and practices within thehumanities, taking into considerationstandards and guidelines used in datamanagement that are relevant forPARTHENOS specific research com-munities, which includes archaeolo-gists, historians, linguists, librarians,archivists, and social scientists. A Data Management Plan for DigitalHumanities: the PARTHENOS Modelby Sheena Bassett (PIN Scrl), Sara Di Giorgio (MIBACT-ICCU) and Paola Ronzino (PIN Scrl) Understanding how data has been created and under which conditions it can be reused is asignificant step towards the realisation of open science.

HumaReC: Continuous Data Publishing in the Humanities

International audienceHumaReC, a Swiss National Foundation project, aims to test a new publication process: continuous data publishing. This model requires research partnerships throughout the process, from the original document source to the publisher and making the data available as soon as it is produced. The HumaReC object of study is a trilingual, 12th century, New Testament manuscript

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HumaReC: Continuous Data Publishing in the Humanities

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