Research data centre services for complex software environments in the humanities

Abstract

Research data is – regardless its disciplinary provenance – very heterogeneous in terms of data formats, applied research methods and content. In contrast to publications, a much broader spectrum of data representations has to be considered by research data infrastructures. Within the Humanities Data Centre project (HDC) an initial service portfolio for research data from the humanities has been developed in its design phase (2014–2016). Not only does this service portfolio has to facilitate the re-use of research data by third parties, a service anybody would expect as conventional for a research data centre, but it also has to provide novel benefits for the providers of research data to promote their contribution of data, documentation and support. As an example for these intended benefits for research data providers we will introduce two service components: the application preservation and the referencing of complex software environments. Jointly applied they enable researchers to archive and reference to complex representations of research data such as digital editions, virtual research environments, or data visualisations.