Researchers from Coventry University’s Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC) are collaborating on the project Materialising Open Research Practices in the Humanities and Social Sciences (MORPHSS), which has been awarded over £800,000 to encourage and embed innovative open research practices within humanities and social science (HSS) disciplines. Funded by the Research England Development (RED) Fund, the Wellcome Trust, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, this interdisciplinary project is led by Dr Samuel Moore (Scholarly Communication Specialist, Cambridge University Library) as part of a collaboration with Cambridge Digital Humanities, Coventry University, the University of Sheffield and the University of Southampton.
Open Licensing for HSS research
CPC researchers Dr Janneke Adema and Dr Rebekka Kiesewetter will conduct research on open licensing for HSS research, and will seek to engage researchers with alternative approaches to open research licensing. These alternatives to Creative Commons (CC) licenses are arising out of different contexts that are more appropriate for experimental research in HSS, such as peer production and Collective Conditions for Reuse (CC4r) and the CARE Principles (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility and Ethics). These licences and approaches to research sharing are not widely adopted in HSS research but could offer a path to facilitate more engagement with open practices that place less emphasis on individualistic understandings of intellectual contribution and which are more respectful towards different understandings and cultural protocols around ownership, control, access, and possession (OCAP) of intellectual property (IP) and heritage materials. Adema and Kiesewetter will bring together the research in this area, including through critical discussion of CC and traditional understandings of IP, and present possible use cases for alternative open research licensing.
“We are excited to contribute to MORPHSS by exploring open licensing alternatives in the humanities and social sciences. Shifting from individualistic, output-focused, and proprietary models to more collaborative, process-oriented, and culturally sensitive frameworks is essential for a radical democratisation of knowledge creation processes and a diverse and equitable scholarly community” (Rebekka Kiesewetter)
How will the MORPHSS project achieve its aims?
MORPHSS will collate a database of practices to recognise where ‘openness’ is already being effectively demonstrated in HSS, for example through collaborative annotations or different approaches to sharing working papers of draft results. As well as drawing on existing examples, innovative experimental approaches will be piloted to encourage open practices. The piloted programmes will focus on long-form scholarship (books), collaborative peer review and data sharing in the social sciences. A series of workshops will be hosted for researchers to feed into these programmes. As a result of gathering and showcasing these case studies, MORPHSS will devise and implement strategies for materialising and sustaining these HSS-appropriate open practices. Moreover, the project will result in the design of a participatory research network to explore and advocate for these practices in the long term (The Open Research Network for the Humanities and Social Sciences). By reinvigorating openness in the HSS sector to break down barriers to knowledge, MORPHSS will have a demonstrable impact on research in the UK and beyond.
