Research Infrastructures News

Research Infrastructures News
by Stefano Sbarbati

PARTHENOS is joining the international initiative to foster collaboration in terms of communications between the four ERICs in the social sciences (CLARIN, DARIAH, ESS, SHARE) as well as CESSDA, which will become an ERIC during 2017, and CLARIAH, a national counterpart to CLARIN and DARIAH in the Netherlands, directly and deeply embedded in the Europe-wide ESFRI enterprise.

The initiative was established in order to create synergies and draw on each others strengths in communications.

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(CESSDA) SND embarks on collaboration with Swedish universities on secure and open access to research data 23.03.2017 | Link
(DARIAH) LIBER and DARIAH-EU Signed Cooperation Agreement: Advancing Digital Research Is a Joint Effort 30.03.2017 | Link
(CESSDA) The journey goes on: CESSDA data archives from the Baltic to the Mediterranean Sea 13.03.2017 | Link
(CESSDA) Ron Dekker becomes CESSDA’s new director Link
(ESS) ESS User Community reaches 100,000 people have now registered with the ESS since 2002 to view or download all our survey data, available for free online. The milestone was reached in mid-December 2016, with the overwhelming majority of registered users based in academia. Link
(CESSDA) EU funding opportunity for data-driven policy development Link
(CLARIAH)Radboud Digital Humanities Spring School 2017 This spring school at Radboud University offers courses into several widely-used techniques and tools in Digital Humanities. Link

DARIAH – Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities

Jakob Epler manages DARIAH-EU’s internal and external communications.
The DARIAH-ERIC is a pan-european infrastructure for arts and humanities scholars working with computational methods. It supports digital research as well as the teaching of digital research methods.
The DARIAH Network connects several hundreds of scholars and dozens of research facilities in currently 17 european countries, the DARIAH member countries. In addition DARIAH has several cooperating partner institutions in countries not being a member of DARIAH, and strong ties to many research projects across Europe. People in DARIAH provide digital tools and share data as well as know-how. They organize learning opportunities for digital research methods, like workshops and summer schools, and offer training materials for Digital Humanities.
Following a bottom-up approach people in DARIAH work together in working groups, with subjects ranging from the assessment of digital tools to the development of standards and the long term accessibility of research materials. Their activities may vary but they all share one common goal: Providing services to scholars in the arts and humanities and therefore helping to do research at its best.

About DARIAH

Became an ERIC in 2014.
Based in Göttingen, Germany
Director: Mike Mertens

Find out more.

CESSDA – Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives

Eleanor Smith’s major responsibilities and duties at CESSDA are developing a communication strategy for CESSDA, setting up CESSDA’s communication activities and tools, as well as supporting CESSDA’s Service Providers and representing CESSDA’s policy work.
The key rationale for the European Research Infrastructure CESSDA is to maximise the availability of relevant data at both a national and multinational level for scientific research, and to provide access to data to promote scientific research in socially and politically relevant areas.

About CESSDA

Aiming to become an ERIC in 2017
Based in Bergen, Norway
Director: Ron Dekker

Find out more.

CLARIAH – Common Lab Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities

Arjan van Hessen is responsible for the dissemination of CLARIAH.
CLARIAH is a distributed research infrastructure facilitating digital applications and data for researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences in a sustainable and user-friendly manner. The CLARIAH infrastructure stimulates innovative research in the humanities.

About CLARIAH

Became an national (DUTCH) infrastructure project in 2014
Based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Director: Lex Heerma van Voss

Find out more.

CLARIN – Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure

Sebastian Drude is the general coordinator of CLARIN ERIC, which entails a broad spectrum of responsibilities and tasks. Among these, he is overseeing the dissemination of CLARIN, leading the CLARIN WEB-team and coordinating the production of materials such as flyers and posters. He is also the first contact person in the central CLARIN Office for people from outside and inside CLARIN.
The ultimate objective of CLARIN ERIC is to advance research in humanities and social sciences by giving researchers unified single sign-on access to a platform which integrates language-based resources and advanced tools at a European level. This shall be implemented by the construction and operation of a shared distributed infrastructure that aims at making language resources, technology and expertise available to the social sciences and humanities (henceforth abbreviated SSH) research communities at large.
The target user community for CLARIN consists of scholars in humanities and social sciences in the European Union and Associated states, and CLARIN is able to serve a broad range of user communities from these fields.
9th pillar of the vision:

User Involvement: The target user community for CLARIN consists of scholars in humanities and social sciences in the European Union and Associated states, and CLARIN is able to serve a broad range of user communities from these fields.
About CLARIN

Became an ERIC in 2012
Based in Utrecht, The Netherlands
Director: Franciska de Jong

Find out more.

ESS – European Social Survey

Stefan Swift is responsible for the dissemination and outreach of ESS.
Funded under the Horizon 2020 project ESS-SUSTAIN, Stefan is the Media and Communications Officer responsible for media and media relations, marketing and public affairs at the European Social Survey.
The European Social Survey is an ESFRI Landmark project that provides freely available cross-national data detailing public attitudes and behaviour over time. The ESS is an academically driven survey, conducted in over 35 countries across Europe since 2001. Every two years, up to 40,000 face-to-face interviews are undertaken with newly selected, cross-sectional samples. All the survey data is available to view and analyse online, or download for free.

About ESS

Became an ERIC in 2013.
Based in London, United Kingdom
Director: Rory Fitzgerald

Find out more.

SHARE – Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

Verena Coscia is responsible for the dissemination and outreach of SHARE
The ratio of older people to total population is higher in Europe than on any other continent – and the phenomenon of population aging will continue well into this century. The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), whose first wave of data was collected in 2004, is the first study to examine the different ways in which people aged 50 and older live in twenty European countries from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and in Israel.
SHARE aims to help researchers understand the impact of population ageing on European societies and thus to help policymakers make decisions on health, social and economic policy.

About SHARE

Became an ERIC in 2011
Based in München, Germany
Director: Axel Börsch-Supan

Find out more.

PARTHENOS – Pooling Activities, Resources and Tools for Heritage E-research Networking, Optimization and Synergies

The PARTHENOS project empowers digital research in the fields of History, Language Studies, Cultural Heritage, Archaeology, and related fields across the (Digital) Humanities.
PARTHENOS supports the work of two European Research Infrastructures, CLARIN (language resources) and DARIAH (digital humanities), as well as various integration projects addressing the cultural domain.
Digital technologies have led to the creation of large digital archives, and to a variety of innovative research methodologies applicable to these archives. The PARTHENOS project is now eager to integrate these archives and new methods to support digital research. This is the mission of new pan-European bodies, called European Research Infrastructures.
Research infrastructures enable the international scientific community to better conduct top-flight research by providing integrated facilities and resources. PARTHENOS supports the work of two research infrastructures, CLARIN (language resources) and DARIAH (digital humanities), as well as various integration projects addressing the cultural domain.

By working together, PARTHENOS will:

develop common standards to ease exploitation;
coordinate joint activities among research projects;
harmonize policy definition and implementation;
pool methods and services;
and share solutions to the same problems.

Individual researchers will benefit from the advanced services made available to everybody by PARTHENOS, and can have a voice in the project development by communicating their needs and wishes. Such services concern all aspects of data management, including: access to and sharing of data; management of intellectual property rights; integration of diverse datasets; tools for discovering openly available resources; guidelines, training and education.
About PARTHENOS

  • Started in 2015
  • 16 partners from 8 different European countries
  • Coordinator: Franco Niccolucci