CORPUS: Next-Generation Online Platform for Research Collaborations in Humanities

Yuan Jia, Xi Niu, Reecha Bharali, Davide Bolchini, Andre De Tienne

Abstract: Two major research resources for humanities scholars are manuscripts and scholarly editions (rigorously reconstituted standard texts of seminal writers and thinkers). However, most of these resources either have not been digitized or are not easy to access online [1]. Consequently, scholars frequently need to spend unnecessary time and effort to find and manage different versions of materials (physical or digital) from different sources. To solve this problem, we propose an online platform called CORPUS – a Collaborative Online Research Platform for Users of Scholarly edition – to support scholarly research online in an efficient manner. CORPUS aims to integrate different types of research materials in the humanities (manuscripts, scholarly editions, online publications, and personal notes) and aggregate different versions of the same texts. In addition, it enhances collaboration among scholars while also providing them with a peer-review-based incentive to share and publish their research work.