Cultural Heritage ecosystems OPENness for the Research Community [CHOPEN4RC]

Patricia Wanderley Ferreira Lopes

Funding Area: Critical shared infrastructure / Infraestructura compartida critica

Problem Statement: The acceleration of the digitization of cultural heritage documentation in recent decades, from different institutions and initiatives, provides the opportunity for greater access and usability of data and resources for the research community and the general public. Within the Spanish context, and specifically in Andalusia, since 2012 an open platform for consultation and downloading of heritage information "The Digital Guide on Andalusia's Cultural Heritage” (hereinafter, Guide) is operated by the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage (IAPH). Currently, the Guide contains more than one hundred thousand records of cultural property and receives annually more than one million visits (https://guiadigital.iaph.es/). Despite the progress achieved, the local research community finds it difficult to use the Guide, or is even unaware of it. The main needs addressed by the CHPEN4RC project are the following: 1) to make the local research community aware of the resources and types of information available in the Guide, understanding how it is organized and structured, how to perform advanced searches and download data; 2) to find out what researchers need in order to make the Guide more usable. Within this context, the questions we address are: What kind of cultural heritage data and/or information does the local research community need? What are the gaps in the Guide to meet those needs? How can we improve the usability of the Guide for researchers?

Proposed Activities: CHOPEN4CH is divided into 3 work packages (WP) and 14 activities (A): 1) WP1. Project Management. A 1.1 [December 15, 2023] - Kickoff meeting with everyone involved in the project; A 1.2 [January 2024] - Drafting and publication of the Data Management Plan. A 1.3 [December 2023 to July 2025] - Contact and call the local research community for the Focus Group Workshops and the experts for Seminars. A 1.4 [December 2023 to December 2025]- Economic-technical management. Follow-up meetings every 6 months of the project. A 1.5 [December 2025] - Final technical-economic report; 2) WP2. Diagnosis. A 2.1 [March 2024]- 1st Focus Group Workshop (2 days). Multilateral session with agents of the local research community. There are two objectives: a) expose which resources, uses and functions of the Guide can be used for research; b) open the debate to researchers to receive comments, suggestions, find out needs, etc. A 2.2 [June 2024]- Multilateral Seminar I (face-to-face, two days in Seville). The goal is to share experiences and strengthen relationships. Six experts with experience in Open Digital Infrastructures for Research in the field of cultural heritage and the humanities will be invited for two working sessions. Possible experts, e.g. professionals from DARIAH consortium project, National Library of Spain (BNE), Nova Lisboa University, IPCE, UPV, among others. A 2.3 [November 2024]- 2nd Focus Group Workshop (1 day). Multilateral session with the local research community. The objectives are: to expose the collected ideas and open the debate towards the design and possible improvements for the user experience. A 2.4 [June 2025]- Multilateral Seminar II (online). The objective of this seminar is to share the results achieved so far and make a route to trace the optimization of the Guide. 7-10 experts will be invited. A 2.5 [September 2025] - Drafting the report of the diagnosis (includes method, results and conclusions); and WP3. Dissemination. A 3.1 [2023 to 2025] - Dissemination through social media platforms and on the IAPH and collaborators' websites. News and information about the proposal, progress and project events. A 3.2 [October 2025] Preparation and publication of the Manual “Digital Guide for Research Community" in open access. A 3.3 [November 2025]. Elaboration of a scientific paper about the project, including its development, results and problems faced. The paper will be send in Dicember 2025 to a hight impact journal. A 3.4. [Dicember 2025] Work on a blog post with IOI staff. To carry out WP1, WP2 and WP3, it will require the use of the equipment and infrastructures available at the IAPH and at the collaborating entities. Also, for all WP the IAPH will provide funding for the team's working hours dedicated to the CHOPEN4CH project. For the activities of WP2 (A2.2), the resources required are: funding for travel costs of the experts invited for the Seminar I. We will promote equal access and participation in all project activities.

Openness: CHOPEN4CH project is framed within the Open Science policy, in which it pursues the promotion of its principles and practices. Currently, the data available in the Guide and Digital Repository of IAPH (ReA, https://repositorio.iaph.es/) are under the CCB 3.0 license. In this sense, the project is based on non-commercial and non-profit platforms and services, which adopts open standards and protocols, and encourages the use and reuse of content, data and associated code with minimal restrictions. The repository is currently pending implementation of the Creative Commons 4.0 International license. The Data Management Plan will follow the FAIR data recommendations. All outputs, data, documents and results of the project will be made available openly for access, consultation, download and reuse in the ReA. These resources will continue to be reusable after the end of the project by anyone interested in them, without access or time restrictions, this will ensure its sustainability over time. The ReA will host the generated documents, assign a Handle for persistent identification and citability of the dataset. The IAPH will provide a URL to access the generated documents with the format https://repositorio.iaph.es/handle/1234. The activities in WP2 will involve the local research community, a group of experts (national and international) and general public. Also, the Multilateral Seminar II will be open to anyone interested to participate.

Challenges: The challenges expected throughout the development of the project are: 1) The understanding of the importance of open digital resources and data by the local community conformed more by humanists. Through the focus group workshops, we aim to mobilize the ideas and resources of local research community and organizations and turn both into development actors, rather than beneficiaries, enabling them to contribute to the improvement of the Digital Guide in a long-term perspective; 2) The realization of a complete diagnosis that contemplates the variety of needs inherent to the local research community in the field of cultural heritage, taking into consideration its wide range of disciplines (anthropology, architecture, archaeology, history, geography, etc.) and the four types of heritage that we deal with in the Guide (immovable, movable, intangible and cultural landscape heritage); 3) The drafting of the Guide's manual with an user approach methodology in order to take into account different profiles of users. To this end, we will rely on the IAPH's long experience in communication, transfer, training and dissemination of projects and activities. 4) To have a high participation of the local community in the focus group workshops. To this end, we will rely on the existing network of contacts and collaborators and expand this network to other collaborations in order to empower the local research community.

Neglectedness: There are some sources of funding available for this type of work, but with a character either more research or more linked to industry, not so much to benefit institutions to improve their existing infrastructures. Also, the proposal has not been sent to any other call because, on the one hand, we have not found any call that contemplates the line developed in the project and, on the other, because the idea arose after having started the INPACTO project, specifically in March 2023. The INPACTO project "INfraestructura de gestión de datos de PAtrimonio ConTempOraneo", TED2021-130882B-I00, is a transfer and research project in which Patricia Ferreira Lopes is principal investigator and it is funded by the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and by the "European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR" (105.225€). In INPACTO, one of its work packages focuses on the diagnosis of the Digital Guide focusing on the visibility and usability of contemporary heritage data. In doing this diagnosis, we realized that the external research team did not know how to use the Digital Guide as a research resource, and we started to detect some needs for its improvement (in terms of controlled vocabulary and specific searches) to optimize the visibility and downloading of contemporary heritage data. For more information about our pasts projects, please visit https://juntadeandalucia.es/organismos/iaph/areas/investigacion-innovacion-patrimonio/proyectos-idi.html

Success: The success of the project can be measured by the following indicators: 1) the number of attendees in the Focus Group workshops. In the two workshops planned, we will open the call for different agents of the local research community; 2) the active participation of the agents throughout the development of the Focus Group workshops for the collection of their needs; 3) the active participation and collaboration in the Seminars of the institutions, experts and atendees for the collection of suggestions and experiences; 4) the number of needs and suggestions collected for the adaptation and improvement of the open infrastructure of the Digital Guide for the research community; 5) the increase in the use of the Andalusian Cultural Heritage Digital Guide and its resources for research. For this we can quantify e.g. the number of visits, number of data downloads, number of scientific articles produced using data from the Guide, development of research projects that want to improve the information and data from the Guide; 6) the growth in the number of agents collaborating in the Digital Guide; 7) the number of downloads and citations of the final report; 8) the number of downloads and citations of the scientific article, once it is published; 9) the number of downloads of the Manuel “Digital Guide for Research Community”; 10) social Network interaction statistics.

Total Budget: 10300$

Affiliations: Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage (IAPH)

LMIE Carveout: No.

Team Skills: Our team is multidisciplinary and is made up of profiles working in the field of cultural heritage and information management: Patricia Ferreira-Lopes is an architect (PhD in Architecture), senior researcher in DH, professor at the UNIR and University of Seville, and an expert evaluator at the UE Commission; Pilar A. Ibañez is an archivist (PhD in History) at the IAPH. She works in the organization and systematization of the Archive and Repository; José Luis Zafra is a computer engineer and head of the information systems area of the IAPH; Pilar M. F. Quincoces is an archaeologist at the IAPH. She is responsible for the immovable heritage data in our information management system; M. Luisa Loza is archivist (PhD in History) and head of the documentation services (Archive, Library and Media Library ) at the IAPH; Inmaculada Álvarez is an anthropologist at the IAPH. She is responsible for the intangible heritage data in our information management system. The main competencies of this team are: Cultural heritage documentation, project management, cultural heritage and information legislation and regulations, data standardization, information management systems, archiving, digitization, web environment and organizational techniques. Our team have participated in various R+D+i projects in collaboration with national and international research centers and institutions (https://juntadeandalucia.es/organismos/iaph/areas/investigacion-innovacion-patrimonio/proyectos-idi.html )

Submission Number: 46