Text+: Language- and text-based Research Data Infrastructure

All persons listed have actively contributed to the Text+ proposal. In addition, thanks go to Alexander Czmiel, Sonja Friedrichs, Anne Klammt, Wolfgang Klein, Frank Michaelis, Stefan Schmunk, Alexander Steckel and Roberta Toscano.

Text+ aims to develop a research data infrastructure for Humanities disciplines and beyond whose primary research focus is on language and text. Text+ will be flexible, scalable, and thus open for different discipline-specific requirements. By offering easy access to high quality research data, Text+ will support a maximum of methodological diversity, which in turn is a prerequisite for innovative and transdisciplinary research. Text+ focuses on Collections, Lexical Resources and Editions. These data domains have a long tradition of research and are linked to mature methodological paradigms that require distinctive but also cross-disciplinary practices of data generation, curation and management. The three types of research data are indispensable for a wide range of Humanities disciplines, including, but not limited to, Classical Philology, Linguistics, Literary Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Non-European Cultures, Jewish Studies and Religious Studies, Philosophy, and language- and text-based research in the Social and Political Sciences. From the outset, 26 data centres will participate in Text+ that are technically sound and that are highly regarded in their fields of specialisation. They will provide data, tools, and services for the analysis and re-use of research data across a broad range of disciplines. By grouping data, tools, and services into thematic clusters, an optimal bundling is achieved. There are 34 institutions participating in Text+ that represent the communities addressed by Text+ as broadly as possible: research libraries, universities, Digital Humanities data centres as well as members of the Union of German Academies of Arts and Sciences and of the Leibniz Society. In addition, leading computing centres ensure robust and persistent operation of services for a distributed research data infrastructure. The high level of interest in Text+ is not only evidenced by the substantial in-kind contributions by the Text+ partner institutions, but is also documented by the more than 120 research-driven user stories and by the large number of letters of support from the communities of interest participating in Text+. At the heart of the governance structure are three scientific coordination committees for the data domains and one for the infrastructure. Their task is to continuously evaluate the portfolio of data, tools and services and to promote its further development according to the priorities of the participating disciplines in coordination with the infrastructure providers. The research data management strategy of Text+ is the core instrument for achieving the main objectives of Text+ in the NFDI context. It paves the way for the integration of data, tools and services into an infrastructure that meets relevant standards and implements the FAIR and CARE principles.