Elements of a national strategy in France for the DARIAH ERIC : 2016-2019

This working document aims to define Huma-Num’s policy regarding DARIAH, the European Infrastructure, for the next three years (2017-2019). It should be remembered that the CNRS and the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MENESR) have granted Huma-Num responsibility for coordinating French participation in the DARIAH ERIC and CLARIN ERIC.

This document is of an exploratory nature and will be submitted to the Scientific Committee as well as Huma-Num’s governing bodies before any publication is made.

The DARIAH project was launched in 2006 in the context of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). It was created to equip the European Union with an infrastructure that would allow common means of communication and services. The founding partners of the project (France, Germany, Holland) defined the scientific and organizational (Virtual Competency Centers and their tasks) directives for DARIAH until 2014, at which point the ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) was created in July of that year. The ERIC has international organizational status. The main objective of DARIAH is to facilitate research by means of digital objects and to share work methods associated with these objects in the arts and humanities. The specific objectives are to :

• Make digital resources accessible
• Make digital services accessible
• Share and cultivate skills on a European level

In 2015, DARIAH’s General Assembly suggested creating thematic Working Groups based on the RDA (Research Data Alliance) model. The operational structure of the DARIAH ERIC was set up at the same time. Since then, the number of national partners has risen considerably and is now 17, not counting the institutional members and associated projects that are also a part of it.

The DARIAH ERIC has also taken on another task, consolidating the construction phase of a H2020 project “Humanities at Scale” and is also involved in a second H2020 project, “Parthenos”, which concerns research infrastructures. As a partner for these two projects, DARIAH, as an international organization, associates the countries which are a part of it. France’s participation in these two projects is coordinated by Huma-Num.

It should be remembered that the contribution of each of DARIAH’s partners is made up of contributions in kind as well as direct financing (150k€ on average from France taken from the Huma-Num budget). The amount of the contribution is based on the GDP for each country and the split is 90% in kind and 10% monetary. During the beginning phase of the ERIC (2014-2015), France sent out a call for contributions throughout the humanities and social sciences community, which resulted in 39 contributions in 2015.

For 2016, Huma-Num’s Steering Committee, on the recommendation of the Scientific Committee, decided to extend all of the previous contributions in kind. The first batch of 2015 contributions including their evaluation by the Scientific Committee made it apparent that a reworking of how the contributions in kind were conceived was called for. This was a necessary adjustment due to the varied nature of national contributions. In addition, the interest shown by other national members in DARIAH varies and they have developed different organizational models that have yielded disparate types of contributions which are not easily comparable whether it be in terms of quantity or quality (scientific and financial).

The years 2015 and 2016 mark a time of evolution of the DARIAH entity which is currently taking measures to be able to work on H2020 projects concerning infrastructure. The DARIAH ERIC is a consortium of 17 national members and can take on projects from the European Commission. One of the main stakes for DARIAH at present is to justify its results, mainly its ability to be operational before the end of the first term of undertaking by the principal countries for the 2014-2019 period.

Download the complete national strategy roadmap in France for the DARIAH ERIC (english version). The french version is available at https://humanum.hypotheses.org/2675.