Jennifer Edmond nominated to European Open Science Policy Platform
30 May 2016 - Dr Jennifer Edmond, Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Humanities at Trinity College Dublin has been nominated as a Member of the European Commission Open Science Policy Platform (OSPP). The OSPP will be instrumental in further developing and implementing a European Open Science Policy.
The members of the Open Science Policy Platform comprise 20-30 high-level representatives of the broad constituency of European (open) science stakeholders. Research Commissioner Moedas launched the Open Science Policy Platform on the 27th of May at the Competitiveness Council in Brussels.
Dr Edmond will be acting on behalf of the pan-European Digital Research Infrastructure for Arts and Humanities (DARIAH), where she is a member of the steering committee. ‘I am thrilled to see that the European Commission has recognised the key role that research infrastructures and other such intermediaries play in the emerging scientific ecosystem. That they should choose the European Arts and Humanities research infrastructure to represent this perspective is particularly refreshing. Through DARIAH, I hope to become a voice in this process not just for the infrastructure community, but for the historian, literary scholar, philosopher or other humanist, not to mention individuals employing practice-based research methods, who face significant challenges in sharing their data and adapting their research practices to the changing demands for science.’
Open Science comprises one of three main pillars which will determine the policy for European science over the coming years. It represents the Commission’s response to the ongoing changes in the way research takes place, including collaborations between researchers, the sharing of knowledge, the engagement of citizen scientists and the organisation of science more generally. It describes a new approach to the scientific process which has at its core cooperative work which looks at the new ways knowledge can be distributed using digital technologies, and what the wider impact of this distribution on the systems of science will be.
The aim of the Open Science Policy Platform is to help address all of the issues of concern for the European science and research community during this transition process.
Dr Edmond believes that Open Science must take into account the challenges facing those in the Arts and Humanities disciplines: ‘Open Science cannot develop effectively without a full understanding of its implications across diverse disciplines and sectors of research.’
‘For example, cultural heritage institutions vary widely in their approach to releasing data for research uses and in some cases researchers must make binding commitments not to release the information any further. This is a barrier to Open Science far beyond the control of the individual scholar and one that is presenting significant barriers to the development of research infrastructure and the circulation of knowledge.’
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Dr Jennifer Edmond has been based in Trinity College Dublin for 10 years where she also was active in the initial establishment of the Trinity Long Room Hub Institute, Trinity’s Arts and Humanities Research Institute. Dr Edmond was also Coordinator of the Collaborative, European Digital Archival Research Infrastructure (CENDARI), a significant advanced community project providing new research tools for historians across Europe, which was recently completed. Within DARIAH, she is the Co_Director of the Virtual Competency Centre on Research and Education and she is also the co-coordinator of the Centre for Digital Humanities based in the Trinity Long Room Hub.
Contact: Aoife King, Communications Officer | Trinity Long Room Hub | aoife.king@tcd.ie | 01 896 3895