Abstract - Peter Doorn, Heiko Tjalsma and Andreas Gros
Peter Doorn, Heiko Talsma
DARIAH / DANSand
Andreas Gros
DARIAH / MPDL(click on the title to see the presentation slides)
"Open Access to Humanities data: the DARIAH e-infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities"
In this presentation we will look into the challenges Open Access poses for digital publications and data in the arts and the humanities, in particular in a new e-infrastructure for these fields under construction at the moment. DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) is one of the European e-infrastructure projects now being prepared within the framework of ESFRI – the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures. DARIAH aims to develop and maintain an infrastructure in support of ICT-based research practices across the arts and humanities, acting as a trusted intermediary between disciplines and domains. DARIAH is working with communities of practice to
- Develop and apply ICT-based methods and tools to enable new research questions to be asked and old questions to be posed in new ways
- Link distributed digital source materials of many kinds
- Provide access to digital research collections
- Exchange knowledge, expertise, methodologies and practices across domains and disciplines
DARIAH is a clear advocate of Open Access as laid down in the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities” (2003). In principle, it is the policy of DARIAH to support and promote free and unrestricted availability of both research data and publications at all times. However, in practice there are barriers which have to be overcome to achieve this. Even when the most basic hurdles have been taken, some data will not, at least not anytime soon, be made freely available. Data can be protected by law, in particular personal data, and there may be contractual obligations with third parties, which have to be respected. In addition, there are big differences in what one can do under “academic use” with data and publications between European countries, which makes it difficult for a pan-European research infrastructure to provide transparent access across European boundaries.
