building research environments online

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BUILDING RESEARCH ENVIRONMENTSThe 2013 ACHRC Annual MeetingDeb Verhoeven @bestqualitycrab

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+$-

+ BENEFIT -

HuNI

Research My World (pozible)

the HuNI Project – a virtual laboratory for the humanities

Humanities Network Infrastructure

http://huni.net.au/

• One of the Virtual Laboratories funded by the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) project

• Integrating humanities data at a national level

• Deploying a Virtual Laboratory (or vLab) for researchers to search for (discover), and work with (analyse), the large-scale aggregations of HuNI data.

about HuNI

a partnership

… a Deakin led consortium

• Cultural data providers (10) – project co-operators

• Humanities software developer (1) – project co-developers

• eResearch organisations (2) – lead development agencies…UNLOCKING AND UNITING AUSTRALIA’S

CULTURAL DATASETS

HuNI partner datasetsAMHDMAPCAARPBonzaAFIRCCircus OzAusStage

Media: film, cinema, theatre, newspapers, magazines, advertising, music, live performances

DAAOAustLitAWRADBDoS

Biographical: artists, designers, writers, significant people, scientists, Sydney demographics

EOAS

AUSTLANGMura Indigenous languages

AustLit

ADB

DAAO

AUSTLANG

bonza

AusStage

EOAS

TUGG

Welcome to the Cinema and Audiences Research Project (CAARP) database: An online encyclopaedia of cinema-going in Australia.

DataThis site contains information on film screenings and venues in Australia. 311,137 screenings10,256 films1,978 cinemas1,649 companiesFrom 1846 to now

• NeCTAR investment of $1.329M

• Partner contributions of $480,000

• Partner in-kind contributions amounting to >$1M

a fiscal collaboration

a project• project director/ community liaison lead (20%)

• project manager (100%)

• technical coordinator (100%)

• information services coordinator (90%)

• community liaison (20%)

• communication coordinator (20%)

• administrative support (20%)

• software developer(s)

The HuNI project began in June 2012 and runs until December 2013 (possibly June 2014).

overall data architecture

Virtual Laboratory Researcher Workflow – Discovery (part 1)

Virtual Laboratory Researcher Workflow – Discovery (part 2)

Virtual Laboratory Researcher Workflow – Discovery (part 3)

Virtual Laboratory Researcher Workflow – Analysis (part 1)

Virtual Laboratory Researcher Workflow – Analysis (part 2)

Virtual Laboratory Researcher Workflow – Sharing

HuNI project website – huni.net.au

HuNI project wiki – apidictor.huni.net.au

• Ensure that Australian cultural datasets and the research associated with them become part of the emerging international Linked Open Data environment.

• Enable research enquiries to move easily from: what is? to where is?

• Support the role of annotation and metadata in discovery of new knowledge or the means to elucidate new knowledge

• Position the idea of data as both a subject and object of analysis in humanities

• Contribute to debates around standards for development and implementation

Broad Benefits

• Enable humanities researchers to work with cultural datasets more efficiently and effectively, and on a larger scale than is presently possible;

• Encourage the systematic sharing of research data between humanities researchers (including the cultural dataset curators themselves), the community and cultural institutions;

• Encourage a higher level of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, both within the humanities/creative arts and between the humanities/creative arts and other disciplines, and the wider public;

• Support innovative methodologies such as network analysis, game theory and ‘virtual history’ that rely on large-scale datasets

Specific Benefits

1. Organisational level: the goals and processes of the institutions involved2. The semantic level: meaning of the exchanged digital resources3. Technical level: implementing data interoperability requires both data

integration and data exchange processes as well as enabling effective use of the data that becomes available

Pasquale Pagano, ‘Data Interoperability’ (GRDI2020)

4. Project level: The advent of more complex ‘big humanities’ projects requires multiple and multi-disciplinary personnel which in turn entails the organization of different workflows and expectations: e.g. challenge of developing a comprehensive or consortial approach, common definition of project method and so on.

Challenges - interoperability

pozible.com/ResearchMyWorld

CROWDFUNDING UNIVERSITY RESEARCH

...because it takes a village to fund the answers

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Research My World

Deb Verhoeven, ACHRC, July 2013

‘Research My World’ launched in April 2013:• eight projects• spanning a range of

discipline areas and project types

• Aiming for $5,000-$20,000

• One admin assistant at 0.2

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Research My World

Deb Verhoeven, ACHRC, July 2013

Pilot completed June 2013:• six successful • $50,000 of new

research funding• more than 200 media

stories• more than 3,600

specific tweets (incl. Stephen Fry to 5.5m followers)

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Research My World

Deb Verhoeven, ACHRC, July 2013

CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Broad benefits

Deb Verhoeven, ACHRC, July 2013

• Disintermediation of research funding

• Reduction of “compliance burden” for researchers (and universities)

• Digital “presence building” for the researchers and their work including capacity building in digital culture/skills for the researchers

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Specific benefits

Deb Verhoeven, ACHRC, July 2013

• Provide a unique opportunity to promote research in terms of its meaning to communities and not just other academics (‘to bring research home’). Successful funding campaigns relied on clear communication of projects and social and traditional media engagement.  

• Shift the way universities promote research in an increasingly networked environment

• Provide an additional funding stream for researchers, particularly those at the start of their career

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Specific benefits

Deb Verhoeven, ACHRC, July 2013

• Focus effort on communicating with the public rather than labour-intensive, highly competitive, blind reviewed funding applications with diminishing success rates

• Provide ‘discipline-neutral’ opportunity; both science and humanities-creative arts were able to generate funds if community relevance was demonstrated

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Challenges

Deb Verhoeven, ACHRC, July 2013

• the ‘digital capacity’ of individual academics

• the ‘digital capacity’ of academic institutions

• expectations arising from the difference between existing campaigns for crowdfunding and those specific to a projects with ‘research’ focus

• the public’s response to projects from different research disciplines