Hi everyone,
in today’s edition I will try to explain what DARIAH / CLARIAH is and what they do in the context of FAIR data. I am also sharing a video of some recent presentations about Wikipedia from the Wikimedia Research Showcase.
❓ The speed at which technology develops is staggering. It is very important for anyone in any research discipline to keep up to date and have access to the latest methods and services. In today's FAIR Buzzword Bingo, I introduce you to the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH). How it is organised and how it supports knowledge sharing.
🎥 I remember the dark days before Wikipedia, a time when various suppliers sold encyclopaedias on CDs! Thankfully, we now have Wikipedia! Anyone can edit Wikipedia, so it is important to check the integrity of the knowledge it contains. In today's videos not to miss section, I share two presentations that cover reference integrity in Wikipedia and a monitoring system for high-risk content.
❓ FAIR Buzzword Bingo: DARIAH / CLARIAH
There are already countless intertwined research and infrastructure initiatives in the cultural heritage field, even more beyond it. Each week I will focus on one of the many FAIR data-related initiatives; last week I looked at the ERIC research infrastructure CLARIN, which focuses on language material; this week it’s another ERIC: the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) / CLARIAH.
We are living in a technologically evolving knowledge society. This also holds for research in the Arts and Humanities which does not center around studying dusty books. In order to perform excellent research, you need to be on top of the game! This means assessing new technologies, having access to tools, services and data, but also to exchange knowledge. Providing you with this capabilities is the mission of DARIAH!
DARIAH (Q49103279) is the outcome of an initial project between 2008 and 2011, that started with 14 consortia from 8 countries. Now in 2023 this is extended to 197 partner institutions from 21 member states! Since 2014 DARIAH has been an official ERIC and the two follow-up projects HaS-DARIAH (Q120836405) and DESIR (Q120836372) have further enhanced DARIAH in the recent years.
Organization within DARIAH
From an organizational point of view, I would like to highlight two things: firstly, how the collaboration within DARIAH is managed, and secondly, how a national DARIAH consortium might be structured, based on two examples. I do this in the hope that it will give you an idea of how such large initiatives can work.
DARIAH collaboration
Besides the administrative governance, different working groups such as Multilingual DH, Ethics and Legality or Research Data Management exist that are coordinated by four Virtual Competency Centres (VCCs).
VCC E-infrastructures providing the technical foundation
VCC Research and Education Liaison acting as the primary contact for the research and teaching communities
VCC Scholarly Content Management dealing with the creation, curation and dissemination of scholarly content
VCC Advocacy Impact and Outreach assessing DARIAH’s impact and outreach to various stakeholders
Since recently, DARIAH members and institutions from non-member countries can also work together in a Regional Hub. I could imagine something like a hub around an Iberian theme, including Portugal and Spain, or a hub around some Benelux-specific themes including Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
DARIAH national consortia
The way in which a national DARIAH consortium is organized varies from country to country. For example, in some countries a single “CLARIAH” entity serves as a contact point for both DARIAH and CLARIN (which I introduced in the last edition) as they have some overlap and similar stakeholders. Let’s have a look at two examples: Belgium and Germany
🇧🇪 In Belgium, the DARIAH-BE consortium consists of 14 partner institutions. Its scientific and technical activities are coordinated by three sub consortia that represent the regional structure of Belgium: DARIAH-VL for Flanders, DARIAH-FWB for the Federation Wallonia-Brussels and DARIAH-FED representing Federal Scientific Institutes, such as the Royal Library (my employer). The National Representing Entity is the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO).
🇩🇪 In Germany, the infrastructures of the initial DARIAH-DE and CLARIN-D consortia were merged and a single CLARIAH-DE consortium was formed in 2019. Since 2021, the national coordination is managed by an association with the catchy name Geistes- und kulturwissenschaftliche Forschungsinfrastrukturen e.V. (currently created by transforming the existing TextGrid association (Q120837364)). In addition to international cooperation via ERICs, this association can also support the coordination of its members with initiatives of the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) (Q105757481).
DARIAH and FAIR data
The most important question for this newsletter: how about FAIR data? This initiative is all about sharing experiences and sharing knowledge. Several of the provided services provide FAIR data, such as the OpenAIRE DARIAH Community Gateway as a single entry point to DARIAH-affiliated research output or the vocabs service via the DARIAH-AT consortium with thesauri following the SKOS standard.
DARIAH is continuing to strive for excellent research in the arts and humanities. Following the DARIAH Strategic Plan 2019-2026:
“The strategy stands upon the four pillars of: building the Marketplace as a humanist-friendly component of the European Open Science Cloud; approaching training and education strategically and in a coordinated fashion; deepening our connection to our communities and ensuring they are with us; and strengthening our voice in policy and advocacy. Delivery upon these areas will be monitored through a series of quantitative and qualitative success measures tied in to the areas in which DARIAH’s impact, manifested in improved organisational efficiency, research excellence, network development and innovation, can be evidenced.” - DARIAH Strategic Plan 2019-2026
What do you think about DARIAH, are you involved and how are your experiences? Please let me know if I’ve missed something important!
Below is a short video about a DARIAH event at Stanford, check it out to see yourself how knowledge is exchanged (two more videos are available here).
🎥 Videos not to miss
I have covered Wikidata in this newsletter already a lot, the structured data backbone of many Wikimedia projects. But there is also Wikipedia, which is essential for many daily tasks and also for research. Once a month, the Wikimedia Foundation hosts the online event Wikimedia Research Showcase. In this event series, the Wikimedia Research team and guest presenters talk about research.
A few days ago, the July edition with the theme Improving knowledge integrity in Wikimedia projects was streamed.
Watch the video below to learn more about the assessment of reference quality in Wikipedia and how it has evolved in the past 10 years. The good news is, the Reference Need (RN) score has dropped by 20%, which means there are more references! Next to this, there is also a talk on the integrity of the articles themselves. A novel system is presented that is used to monitor high-risk content in hundreds of Wikipedia language editions!
That’s it for this week of the FAIR Data Digest. Let me know what you think about the content or if I have missed something. Don’t forget to share or subscribe. See you next week!
Sven