Center for Open Data in the Humanities

Center for Open Data in the Humanities
Name	Center for Open Data in the Humanities
Formation	2017
Type	Research center
Location	University of Gothenburg
Fields	Digital humanities, Open data

Center for Open Data in the Humanities

The Center for Open Data in the Humanities is an interdisciplinary research and service center based at the University of Gothenburg that supports open, reusable research data across the humanities. It engages with archival partners, national libraries, museums and scholarly networks to build infrastructure, standards and training for datasets used in historical, literary and cultural research. The center collaborates with universities, funding bodies and cultural institutions to promote reproducible scholarship and long-term data preservation.

History

Founded in 2017 at the University of Gothenburg with roots in initiatives from the Swedish Research Council, the center emerged amid European investments in digital scholarship such as the Horizon 2020 programme and national efforts like the Digisam strategy. Early activities intersected with projects at the Royal Library of Sweden and collaborations with the Nationalencyklopedin editorial teams, reflecting parallel developments at institutions including the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the German National Library and the Library of Congress. The center’s timeline includes partnerships with the Swedish National Archives, contributions to pan-European networks such as DARIAH, and participation in consortia funded through the European Research Council and national grants.

Mission and Objectives

The center’s mission aligns with policy frameworks promoted by the European Commission, the Research Council of Norway and the Swedish Research Council to make research outputs findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable as advocated in the FAIR data principles. Objectives include developing data curation workflows used by the National Library of Scotland, producing training materials modeled on materials from the Open Knowledge Foundation and advancing metadata standards employed by the International Council on Archives and the Getty Research Institute. It seeks to enable scholars working with collections from institutions such as the Vatican Library, the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institution and the Rijksmuseum to publish open datasets that interoperate with catalogues like those at the Europeana portal.

Programs and Projects

Programs encompass thematic initiatives on text encoding, linked open data and digitized cultural heritage. Representative projects have focused on text corpora interoperable with Project Gutenberg, entity extraction workflows comparable to those used by Wikidata and annotation platforms akin to Hypothes.is. The center has led or partnered on projects involving manuscript digitization similar to collaborations between the Bodleian Libraries and the Wellcome Collection, joint research with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and networked data pilots inspired by work at the National Library of the Netherlands. Training programs adapt curricula from the Open Science Framework and professional development models from the Digital Preservation Coalition.

Data and Technology Infrastructure

The center operates data repositories and platforms that interlink with infrastructures such as Dataverse, GitHub for code preservation, and sustainable archiving services comparable to those at the Portico and CLOCKSS. Technical stacks draw on standards from the World Wide Web Consortium and ontologies used by the Library of Congress, with persistent identifiers coordinated alongside organisations like ORCID and DataCite. Tools and services include workflows for converting TEI-encoded texts as practiced at the British Library, RDF triplestores used in projects influenced by the Europeana Data Model, and API endpoints designed to interoperate with discovery services at the Digital Public Library of America.

Partnerships and Collaborations

Strategic partners include national cultural heritage institutions such as the Nationalmuseum (Sweden), academic partners like the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and research networks including CLARIN and DARIAH-EU. International collaborations extend to the Consortium of European Research Libraries and museum partners such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Stedelijk Museum. Funders and program partners have included the European Research Council, the Nordic Council of Ministers and foundations similar to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Governance and Funding

Governance structures reflect university-hosted research centers at institutions like the University of Gothenburg and advisory boards including representatives from the Swedish Research Council, cultural institutions such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, and international experts affiliated with the Getty Foundation and the Max Planck Society. Funding mixes competitive grants from bodies like the Horizon 2020 programme, national research councils comparable to the Research Council of Norway, and project support from foundations resembling the Wellcome Trust.

Impact and Reception

The center’s outputs have been cited in projects and publications associated with the European Commission, reports by the Swedish National Heritage Board, and methodological work from universities including the University of Edinburgh and the University of Toronto. Its datasets and tools have been integrated into portals akin to Europeana and referenced in training by the Digital Humanities Summer Institute and the International Council on Museums. Peer reception highlights contributions to reproducible scholarship noted in forums hosted by UNESCO and research infrastructure evaluations by panels convened by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures.

Category:Digital humanities Category:Open data