Seeing Shapes in the Cloud: Perspectives from the Humanities on Interdisciplinary Data Integration

Abstract

One of the major factors inhibiting interdisciplinary, data-driven research is how to capture provenance and facilitate the discovery, use, and reuse of discipline specific research data. The growing pressure to find ways to enable technological and cultural compliance with the nascent European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is intensifying what is an already difficult proposition. This paper outlines an approach based upon the findings of the Knowledge Complexity (KPLEX) project (https://kplex-project.eu/) which investigated the delimiting effect digital mediation and datafication can have on rich, complex cultural data. As KPLEX was humanities-led but ICT-funded, the project partners approached this challenge in a comparative, multidisciplinary and multisectoral fashion. This paper investigates and outlines the wider lessons to be learned from data reuse practices in the arts and humanities, fields well accustomed to dealing with complex, hybrid, and noisy data. Understanding the challenges that complex research data pose to our research infrastructures will help facilitate the transition to a truly open and interdisciplinary frontier for scientific research and innovation. This paper focuses on the criteria and guidelines for the recognition and classification of data, both between and within research data infrastructures and research communities. It describes the ways in which the effectiveness of traditional signposting mechanisms such as research classification systems, taxonomies, and metadata are weakened in the digital age and sets forth key policy-relevant findings on how to tackle those issues and maximise the participation of a wider set of disciplines under the vision of the EOSC.