Research Data Management WG at DARIAH – a brief introduction

Sharing knowledge, research outputs and other scholarly resources in ways that are tuned for long-term availability and maximal value, use and reuse are essential practices but also key challenges for arts and humanities researchers. The DARIAH Research Data Management Working Group aims to tackle such challenges and will support DARIAH to fulfill its mission of facilitating access to data, and supporting the work of our communities with best practices and methods in this relatively new area of academic life.

The idea behind the Working Group is to leverage on the disciplinary and thematic richness of communities around DARIAH and to offer a unique space for collaboration among representatives of all major arts and humanities disciplines, cultural heritage professionals and data management experts. Involving champions from all major disciplines in the arts and humanities domain is especially important since the primary focus of the WG would be to start out from everyday research practices and firmly ground data management best practices in them. The Working Group will sustain a more intensive dialogue with the DARIAH communities about research data management, strengthen communities of practice and showcase how different disciplinary communities can take advantage of open scholarly infrastructure and tools that are available for the DARIAH communities. In addition, we are also aiming to build a knowledge hub for new professionals around data management support (data managers, data stewards, Open Science officers, subject librarians etc.) from across the DARIAH national hubs to give them the chance to exchange along the discipline-specific dimension.

Currently, we are working on the following tasks:

• Building and maintaining a knowledge base of data management best practices in the humanities: https://www.zotero.org/groups/2427138/data_management_best_practices_in_the_humanities
• Providing concise, discipline-or data type-focussed case studies that are adapted to the specific methods, scale, and interests of the disciplinary communities
• Facilitating access to Cultural Heritage data, supporting the exchange between the GLAM sector and scholars under the aegis of the Heritage Data Reuse Charter
• Building a brokering hub for experts who have data management roles nationally
• Design a joint project to undertake with other DARIAH WGs

If you are interested in joining us, please contact us at wg-rdm@dariah.eu