Update:
Find our recently released Work Package 1 outputs here:
• Openness in the arts, humanities and social sciences: Documenting open research practices beyond STEM (Report)
• Catalogue of Open Research Practices in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
Project Deliverables Overview
MORPHSS (Materialising Open Research Practices in the Humanities and Social Sciences) will devise ways to encourage and embed innovative open research practices within humanities and social science disciplines.
Over 36 months, beginning in February 2025, MORPHSS will catalogue, pilot, and showcase experimental open research practices in the humanities and social sciences; explore how to support these practices for the development of a nuanced conception of openness that is appropriate for humanities & social science disciplines and distinct from more traditional understandings of ‘open science’; and devise and implement strategies for materialising and susataining these HSS-appropriate open practices more widely.
MORPHSS will be organised over seven work packages (WPs), each led by a different member of the project team and with specific deliverables:
Work Package 1: Cataloguing open research practices in the humanities and social sciences – Will catalogue examples of open research practices in the humanities and social sciences, producing a public database. Review and analysis of these practices will consider how each relates to the Open Science movement, either by conforming to it, jarring with it, or resulting in something altogether separate from openness in the sciences. In addition to the database, there will be blog posts and reports, including a report on how HSS disciplines require their own conception of openness. (months 1-6)
Work Package 2: Piloting long-form open research practices in the humanities – Building on the Unbind workshop on reimaginig the academic monograph hosted by Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH) in 2022, this WP will design an actionable research framework for opening out the processes involved in creation, review, and dissemination of longform scholarship. Creation of the framework will involve close collaboration with a Research Software Engineer, and humanities researchers by way of a workshop. The WP will deliver an openly-available, actionable framework presented in a report; an open-source digital tool that will enable humanities researchers to implement the framework, and an additional report summarising the approach taken. (months 7-18)
Work Package 3: Facilitating open research data in the social sciences – Running parallel with WPs 2 and 4, this WP will explore the pressing issue associated with open practices in the social sciences: data sharing. Working closely with researchers carrying out qualitative and mixed-methods research to explore their approaches to data sharing, the WP will identify exemplary practices relating to why, what, when and how to share. The WP will produce an actionable framework encouraging data sharing and reuse across different social sciences disciplines, including collation of good practice guidelines, and a report summarising the approach taken. (months 7-18)
Work Package 4: Piloting collaborative open review practices in the humanities and social sciences – In collaboration with the Journal of Electronic Publishing (University of Michigan), this WP will explore the interconnection between informal feedback processes and more formalised approaches to open peer review, aiming to design a sensitive and structured process that encourages HSS researchers to practice open journal peer review of their preprints. Rather than operating on an open-closed binary, this WP will identify the best ways that HSS peer review can be ‘opened-out’ over a well-structured process, harnessing the forms of openness they already enegage in while encouraging a ‘safe’ way for HSS researchers to further engage in openness. The WP will deliver a working pilot showcasing an approach to open review that is appropriate for HSS, aimed at capturing feedback in a structured way, resulting in a special issue of the Journal of Electronic Publishing. A report will also be published summarising the approach taken. (months 7-18)
Work Package 5: Embedding open research practices in the HSS – This WP will adopt a more programmatic standpoint to the challenges of implementing an HSS-appropriate approach to open research. A series of four workshops with HSS researchers will be hosted at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) in Cambridge and the Information School at the University of Sheffield. These workshops will present findings from WPs 1-4, and explore ways to embed openness within the humanities in a way that allows researchers to take ownership of this development. These findings will inform the design of a new network (proposed in WP7, see below). An openly-available report will also be publishing on the workshop findings, including concrete recommendations for institutions and policy makers. (months 19-24)
Work Package 6: Facilitating open licensing for HSS research – The use of open licensing is a good way to encourage engagement with research, as they signal what kinds of reuse and interaction are permitted. Yet open licensing remains a contentious issue in HSS disciplines for many reasons, including concerns over the academic integrity of research, percieved misuse, and the science-focused origins of CC-BY licenses. Existing open licenses and related approaches to research sharing are not widely adopted in HSS research but could offer a path to facilitate more engagement with open practices. This WP will bring together research in this area, including critical discussion of CC licensing and traditional understandings of IP, presenting some possible use cases for alternative open research licensing. The WP will deliver an openly-available report summarising issues connected with open licensing/CC, along with an assessment of alternatives available. A second report will outline use cases for alternative approaches to open research licensing. (19-30 months)
Work Package 7: the Open Research Network for the Humanities and Social Sciences – WP7 will design and implement an Open Research Network for the Humanities and Social Sciences, as a way of drawing the project resources together, implementing findings, and ensuring a strategic vision for the future of the project. This network will take inspiration from the STEM-focused UK Reproducibility Network but will be focused on an expansive range of open practices in all HSS disciplines. Launched with a workshop held at the Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH), the network will advocate for open research practices in HSS and mainatin training resources and a community of practice composed of members from different institutions in the UK. The work package will also produce a business model for the long-term support of its activities, create and maintain a web presence for the network, communication strategies, and governance structures. (25-36 months)
Find out more about the team leading these initiatives on our About the Team page.