Working Group on eHumanities

An inter-academic initiative of the eight academies and Leopoldina

The "eHumanities" working group is an inter-academic initiative of the eight member academies represented in the Union of Academies and Leopoldina – National Academy of Sciences. In 2016, it was merged into a working group from the two predecessor working groups – the “Electronic Publishing” working group and the “Digital Research” working group.

The members of the working group include academy members, research managers, speakers for digital publications and experts from the IT and Digital Humanities departments of the academies.

Topics of the „eHumanities“ working group

The topics of the "eHumanities" working group include:

• (New) Technologies in the Digital Humanities
• Electronic publication and open access
• Data formats and standards
• Long-term provision and archiving
• Legal questions, especially in connection to publishing contracts

Tasks and Goals

Tasks and Goals of the Working Group:

• Mutual exchange of information concerning performance requirements and approaches to solutions
• Discussion concerning the use of common data formats, standards and/or tools
• The use of norm data, thesauruses and taxonomies
• Common development of interfaces
• Agreement on cross-project think tanks and portals
• Phrasing of common positions on specific technical questions
• Improvement of the visibility and accessibility of research conducted by the academies and its results
• Development of recommendations as a guide and support

The "eHumanities" working group organises an annual two-day workshop taking place at one of the member academies of the Union of Academies to bring the project staff up to date on a topic of electronic publishing. In addition, there are working meetings on individual technical and methodological questions, in which the respective practices are to be coordinated and concrete technical solutions are to be promoted.