D10.1 Quantity of Access Offered – TA3

This deliverable describes the Trans National Access (TNA) activities carried out during the ARIADNEplus project within Work Package 10 (WP10) by CNR and describes the results achieved by this work package. CNR were responsible for the delivery of TNA entitled “Implementing Interoperability” at their premises in Pisa, Italy. The first call was intended from 2020 onwards but the pandemic restrictions stopped travel. No further activities could be undertaken until 2021 when it was decided to organise the TNA as four Summer Schools and all previously accepted applicants were offered (and took up) places on the week-long courses.

All candidates had to send in application forms describing their projects and how these would benefit from the use of the training. One of three independent reviewers evaluated the applications and awarded a mark and recommendation to ensure the quality and relevance of the training for the applicants. All the applications were accepted, the majority being evaluated with the highest rating.

The training had to address a wide range of interests as well as varying levels of knowledge, the project descriptions demonstrating the need for interoperability and future reuse of data.

The goal of the Summer School was to enable researchers and professionals with the management of their datasets with a focus on interoperability, whether creating these from scratch and/or dealing with existing or legacy data within the context of their project. In terms of the numbers, nine of the 15 places were filled, i.e. 60%. Considering that the original plan was to run at least two Summer Schools and that not everyone was prepared to return to in-person activities immediately after travel restrictions were lifted, this is a reasonable achievement in line with expectations.

Finally, each student was asked to complete feedbacks forms after completing their TNA placements. In general, the school was well received, as it can be appreciated from the detailed feedback provided by most of the students. Ontologies are nowadays widely employed both for domain specific modelling and for data integration, but there is no adequate knowledge about them, especially in the disciplines of the Humanities. When exposed to the basic principles of ontology-based modelling, young researchers in the Humanities are prompt to grasp the main concepts, since almost all of them have been exposed to philosophy and have confronted large and articulated conceptual schemas. Once the basics are understood, it does not take much to learn the tools to apply these technologies.

During the lectures, students asked many questions, both theoretical on ontologies and knowledge representation in general, and specific to their projects, which they had the opportunity to present during the first lecture.