Conference Report | 26. April 2024

Dealing with Research Data in the DHd Community

by Melanie, Seltmann, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Research data is an important issue, not at least in the digital humanities. In a report, the abstracts of the DHd2024 annual conference are evaluated according to different phases of the data life cycle, and the community's handling of research data is assessed.

The discussion about research data is becoming increasingly pertinent, in part due to the NFDI consortia. Various activities are being conducted to introduce the "right" way to deal with them to more traditional humanities scholars. It is therefore not surprising that the abstracts for the annual conference of the German-speaking Digital Humanities Association (DHd) repeatedly mention research data and its management.

As part of a travel grant for the DHd2024, awarded by NFDI4Culture, the abstracts of this annual conference are examined for the management of research data and evaluated according to various categories. The categories are based on the phases of the data life cycle (data description, data collection, data preparation, data management/storage, data archiving and data re-use). In each case, it was annotated whether the corresponding category was described in the abstract. Furthermore, the relevant discipline from which the abstract originated was annotated, as was the question of whether the researchers themselves write about research data.

The detailed evaluation and discussion of the results is available on the DHd blog.