Seminar: Digital Resources in the Humanities, 25 April 2013

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Francesca Benatti

The Digital Humanities Thematic Research Network at The Open University is pleased to announce the following event in its Digital Humanities in Practice seminar series:

Digital Collections in the Humanities

Date: 25 April 2013

Time: 11.00am-1.00pm

Venue: Arts Music Studio, Perry D, Milton Keynes, The Open University

Speaker: Prof. Lorna Hughes, National Library of Wales and University of Wales

Digitisation initiatives in libraries, archives, museums and educational institutions have created a ‘deluge’ of data in the humanities that has transformed the information landscape and the way it is navigated for research and teaching. The use of digital collections for scholarship – using ICT based tools and methods – has been the basis of transformative and innovative research across the disciplines, allowing enhanced access to materials, and supporting new modes of collaboration and communication.

This presentation will discuss the research programme in digital collections at the National Library of Wales. This is developing an evidence base for the use, value and impact of the digital collections of Wales, and investigating the relationship between impact and the long terms sustainability of digital collections.

A sandwich lunch will be provided. To book a place, please email Heather Scott heather.scott@open.ac.uk by 22 April 2013.

For more information on Digital Humanities at The Open University, please go to the Digital Humanities website http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/digital-humanities/

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Read Mia Ridge’s presentation for Women’s History in the Digital World Conference

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Francesca Benatti
Women’s History in the Digital World conference logo

Women’s History in the Digital World conference logo

Mia Ridge, PhD researcher in Digital Humanities with the Department of History, The Open University, has published on her blog the presentation she gave at the inaugural Women’s History in the Digital World conference, held on 22-23 March at Bryn Mawr College.

Entitled “New challenges in digital history: sharing women’s history on Wikipedia”, Mia’s talk examined the opportunities and challenges of using Wikipedia as a public history platform for women’s history, focusing on both its visibility to the greater public and its perceived lack of relevance in academic circles. Mia also highlighted outstanding issues with Wikipedia’s requirements for “notability” and “reliable sources” that can especially affect articles on women’s history.

Despite the resistance against writing for Wikipedia among academics, and against women’s history among Wikipedia editors, Mia concludes that

it’s also clearly up to us to make a difference. If it’s worth researching the life and achievements of a notable woman, it’s worth making sure their contribution to history is available to the world while improving the quality of the world’s biggest encyclopaedia.

Read Mia’s full presentation notes on her blog Open Objects.

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PhD studentship with the Listening Experience Database

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Francesca Benatti
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CFP: Digital Media and Sacred Text, 17 June 2013, OU Camden

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Francesca Benatti

CPF: Digital Media and Sacred Text

17 June 2013, 10:00 - 17:00
The Open University Camden Centre, London

This one-day conference will bring together academics interested in the study of digital sacred text from a wide range of religious traditions, including sociologists, ethnographers, media scholars, computer scientists, digital humanists and theologians. We also welcome religious practitioners and publishers engaged in creating digital sacred texts.

Possible topics include:

-         How can digital media affect the relationship between a religious reader and their sacred text?

-         Does digitisation influence the interpretation of a text?

-         What norms are emerging to guide the use of digital sacred texts, and how are those norms being negotiated?

-         How can digital sacred texts be designed to meet the needs of religious readers?

-         What challenges does the process of digitizing sacred text raise for religious communities?

If you would like to present a paper at this event, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words by April 15th to Tim Hutchings (tim.hutchings@open.ac.uk).

Thanks to generous funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, we are able to offer a small number of bursaries to cover travel expenses for PhD students.

The full call for papers is available on the Mediating Religion website.

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Revised Open Access Policy from RCUK

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Francesca Benatti

Research Councils UK (RCUK) have recently published a revised version of their Policy on Open Access, which is open for comments until  20th March and will come into effect on 1st April 2013.

The key differences from previous versions are

  • the statement that the RCUK “supports both ‘Gold’ and ‘Green’ routes to Open Access”, with a preference for “immediate Open Access with the maximum opportunity for reuse”
  • the acknowledgement that the move to Open Access will require “a transition period anticipated to be five years”
  • the permission of “different embargo periods across the disciplines”, with the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences having longer embargoes than the Sciences.

The new policy also clarifies the rules that journals have to follow in order to be considered RCUK-compliant. The preferred option in the older formulation of the policy was for journals to offer free access to articles under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY) after payment of an article processing charge (the ‘Gold’ route to Open Access). Under the revised guidelines, journals will also be considered compliant if they allow their authors to deposit the final accepted manuscript into an institutional repository under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence (CC-BY-NC) within six months of publication of the article, increased to twelve for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (the ‘Green’ route to Open Access).

Section 3.6 further elaborates the issue of embargo periods, reiterating that the longer intervals allowed for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences are only ‘an interim arrangement’ and that the aim is to establish 6 months as the embargo period for all disciplines.

As in previous versions of the policy, funds for article processing charges (APCs) are to come from block grants made directly to  research institutions, which have then to decide how to apportion resources to their staff. The new policy acknowledges that the block grants are not going to cover all publishing costs for research-active institutions, and provides guidelines on what to do if no funds are available for APCs.  Firstly, “the Councils prefer the author to seek an alternative journal with an affordable ‘pay-to-publish’ option or with an option with embargo periods of six or twelve months”. If that is not possible, the RCUK “would expect the paper to be published in a journal with the embargo of 12 months, or 24 months in the arts, humanities and social sciences”.

The aim of the RCUK is to ensure that at the end of the five-year transition period 100% of the articles they fund are published as Open Access, with at least 75% published “through immediate, unrestricted, on-line access with maximum opportunities for re-use.”

Is this policy going to achieve these targets? And just as importantly, is it the most efficient, most effective, most equitable way of doing so?

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