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This report provides information about activities and progress towards establishing DARIAH membership in six countries: the Czech Republic, Finland, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK, which took place between July and December 2019. Previous activities were described in detail in the D3.2 - Regularly Monitor Country-Specific Progress in Enabling New DARIAH Membership. During the project lifetime, the Czech Republic joined DARIAH ERIC; in other countries, collaboration with DARIAH has been greatly strengthened and significant progress regarding DARIAH membership has been achieved. The report also outlines the next steps in the accession processes, building on the results of the DESIR project.

The DESIR project sets out to strengthen the sustainability of DARIAH and firmly establish it as a long-term leader and partner within arts and humanities communities. The project was designed to address six core infrastructural sustainability dimensions and one of these was dedicated to training and education, which is also one of the four pillars identified in the DARIAH Strategic Plan 2019-2026. In the framework of Work Package 7: Teaching, DESIR organised dedicated workshops in the six DARIAH accession countries (Czech Republic, Finland, Israel, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) to introduce them to the DARIAH infrastructure and related services, and to develop methodological research skills. The topic of each workshop was decided by accession countries representatives according to the training needs of the national communities of researchers in the (Digital) Humanities. Training topics varied greatly: on the one hand, some workshops had the objective to introduce participants to specific methodological research skills; on the other hand, a different approach was used, and some events focused on the infrastructural role of training and education. The workshops organised in the context of Work Package 7: Teaching are listed below:• CZECH REPUBLIC: “A series of fall tutorials 2019 organized by LINDAT/CLARIAHCZ, tutorial #3 on TEI Training”, November 28, 2019, Prague;• FINLAND: “Reuse & sustainability: Open Science and social sciences and humanities research infrastructures”, 23 October 2019, Helsinki;• ISRAEL: “Introduction to Text Encoding and Digital Editions”, 24 October 2019, Haifa;• SPAIN: “DESIR Workshop: Digital Tools, Shared Data, and Research Dissemination”, 3 July 2019, Madrid;• SWITZERLAND: “Sharing the Experience: Workflows for the Digital Humanities”, 5-6 December 2019, Neuchâtel;• UNITED KINGDOM: “Research Software Engineering for Digital Humanities: Role of Training in Sustaining Expertise”, 9 December, London.

This document is the first version of the Data Management Plan (DMP) for data collected and created by DESIR. It describes the datasets generated during the course of the project, how the data will be produced and analysed. It details also how the data generated will be shared, disseminated and preserved.

This report discusses challenges the DARIAH community faces in implementing new services on a sustainable basis and illustrates its argument through the implementation of two demonstrators (Redmine project management and Collabora Cloudsuite). The two demonstrators were identified as part of the improvement of the DARIAH infrastructure by previous work in the form of the “Report on researchers’ service needs” (D6.1, Oltersdorf et al. 2016).

A fundamental basis of a successfully operating digital infrastructure such as DARIAH is formed by the services it provides to its users. In the particular case of the distributed setup DARIAH is using, the integration of new services requires support and guidelines that can be agreed to by all current and future service providers. Such generic guidelines can support individual research as well as new research projects just starting out, and – ideally – later enable the infrastructure to sustain their products.

A fundamental basis of a successfully operating digital infrastructure such as DARIAH is formed by the services it provides to its users. In the particular case of the distributed setup DARIAH is using, the integration of new services requires support and guidelines that can be agreed to by all current and future service providers. Such generic guidelines can support individual research as well as new research projects just starting out, and – ideally – later enable the infrastructure to sustain their products.

The DESIR Winter School "Shaping new approaches to data management in arts and humanities" took place in Lisbon on 10-13 December 2019. The event was hosted by NOVA FCSH University facilities and was organised in the framework of the Horizon 2020 funded project DESIR (DARIAH ERIC Sustainability Refined). It aimed at gathering PhD students, arts and humanities scholars from all career stages and research managers interested in the issues raised by sustainable practices to open up data in the arts and humanities. The event was a joint organisation between DARIAH and NOVA FCSH. As such, it brought together the collaboration of national and European experts in the data management field.Sharing knowledge, research outputs and other scholarly resources in ways that are tuned for long-term availability and maximal use and reuse are recognized as essential practices but also key challenges for arts and humanities research. In the last couple of years, this need has also been recognized in a strong political drive in the European Union giving rise to support structures but also policy imperatives for research data management. As a result, Research data management emerged to be a new field of expertise to explore and establish in all range of disciplines.The fact that the concept of data in the arts and humanities domain is far from being a straightforward one adds further complexities to the implementation of such policies in the arts and humanities domain. To meaningfully address the real data needs of the diverse communities of arts and humanities scholars in terms of skills, infrastructure and best practices, we need to keep a reflexive and open exchange about the function of data inspecific research questions and fields of enquiry.The DESIR Winter School provided a unique opportunity for arts and humanities scholars as well as for librarians and research managers to learn about how to maximize the potential of their scholarly resources and to take practical steps in opening up their research in ethically and legally responsible ways. To this end, the DESIR Winter School covered a wide selection of topics ranging from the optimal implementation of FAIR data in the arts and humanities, issues around ethics, Intellectual Property Rights and licensing, data and software citation practices, open research notebooks and innovative publishing practices in the arts and humanities.The main goals of the Winter School were to:• Introduce scientific and academic communities in the arts and humanities to the principles and practices of responsible research and Open Science;• Strengthen the skills of the arts and humanities communities in research data management, curation, sharing, preservation and reuse;• Enable R&D and Higher Education institutions to develop research data strategies and policies;• Foster national and international collaboration amongst the diverse research communities in the arts and humanities;• Introduce participants to innovative publishing practices in the arts and humanities, such as data journals, overlay journals etc.

The DESIR Final Event took place in Zagreb on 6-7 November 2019, alongside the DARIAH General Assembly. The DESIR Final Event brought together the whole consortium and involved several Bodies of the ERIC to maximise the impact of the event. The aim of the meeting was two-fold. First, it was to opportunity to summarise the activities conducted throughout the project and showcase results towards the DARIAH community. Secondly, it proposed a wider discussion over sustainability and funding models with National Representatives prior to the General Assembly.Overall, 57 participants attended the event. The schedule has been structured to present the outcomes of each Work Package. As the project DESIR was divided into an evolving 6-dimensional process, main results can be summarised as follows:Dissemination and Innovation: the aim of this Work Package was to ensure a continuous dissemination of DARIAH service improvements, activities and research results within the relevant communities, academic stakeholders and other interested parties. Furthermore, the Work Package was in charge of organising main dissemination activities during the project and the DARIAH Beyond Europe workshop series (Stanford University, Library of Congress, National Library of Australia).Growth: this Work Package was concerned with the enlargement of the DARIAH membership targeting six countries (Czech Republic, Finland, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom). Membership could only be achieved in Czech Republic, the application was submitted and ratified by the General Assembly in November 2019. Nevertheless, in other countries, collaboration with DARIAH has been greatly strengthened and significant progress regarding DARIAH membership has been achieved.Technology: the Work Package delivered three demonstrators focused on bibliographical metadata. The demonstrators show the usage of tools for bibliographical metadata in various stages of the research process, e.g. extraction of entities, the collection and sorting of citations, visualisation of selected aspects of the data. These demonstrators were built with the involvement of the community of researchers through two Code Sprints organised in Berlin.Robustness: the aim of this Work Package was to strengthen the organisational structure of DARIAH. The activities undertaken had a multifaceted nature: the relationship with the user community was improved through the implementation of a centralised helpdesk; preliminary work towards the Marketplace was conducted; the EURISE Network (European Research Infrastructure Software Engineers' Network) was established with CLARIN and CESSDA; finally a renewed business plan building on existing strategic documents was developed.Trust: this Work Package contributed to DARIAH’s long-term sustainability by measuring acceptance and impact of DARIAH in new cross-disciplinary communities and core groups through a survey, in-depth qualitative interviews and strategic meetings. The analysedinformation collected from each source led to a recommendations and community engagement tool developed to share and translate the recommendations dataset for a broader audience.Teaching: the work carried out during the course of the project led to the implementation of a discovery framework and hosting platform for DARIAH learning resources, DARIAH-Campus. The platform was officially launched during the event. The goal of DARIAH-Campus is to widen access to open, inclusive, high-quality learning materials that aim to enhance creativity, skills, technology and knowledge in the digitally-enabled arts and humanities.

International audience; Europe has a long and rich tradition as a centre of research and teaching in the arts and humanities. However, the huge digital transformation that affects the arts and humanities research landscape all over the world requires that we set up sustainable research infrastructures, new and refined techniques, state-of-the-art methods and an expanded skills base. Responding to these challenges, the Digital Research Infrastructure for Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) was launched as a pan-European network and research infrastructure. After expansion and consolidation, which involved DARIAH’s inclusion in the ESFRI roadmap, DARIAH became a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) in 2014. The Horizon 2020 funded project DESIR (DARIAH ERIC Sustainability Refined) sets out to strengthen the sustainability of DARIAH and help establish it as a reliable long-term partner within our communities. Sustaining existing digital expertise, tools, resources in Europe in the context of DESIR involves a goal-oriented set of measures in order to first, maintain, expand and develop DARIAH in its capacities as an organisation and technical research infrastructure; secondly, to engage its members further, as well as measure and increase their trust in DARIAH; thirdly, to expand the network in order to integrate new regions and communities. The DESIR consortium is composed of core DARIAH members, representatives from potential new DARIAH members and external technical experts. The sustainability of a research infrastructure is the capacity to remain operative, effective and competitive over its expected lifetime. In DESIR, this definition is translated into an evolving 6-dimensional process, divided into the following challenges:•Dissemination•Growth•Technology•Robustness•Trust•EducationWith our poster, we would like to show how the project helps sustaining DARIAH. Within DESIR, dissemination is the ability to communicate DARIAH’s strategy and benefits effectively within the DARIAH community and in new areas, spreading out to new communities. Through the international workshops held at Stanford University and at the Library of Congress, DARIAH has been introduced to many non-European DH scholars. These events were an important first step to foster international cooperation between US and European colleagues as well as a catalyst for ongoing collaborations in the future. A third workshop took place in Canberra at the Australian Research Data Commons in March 2019.DARIAH has currently 17 members from all over Europe. Nevertheless, efforts should be made to include as many countries as possible to bring in and scale, to a European level, even more state-of-the-art DH activities.Six candidates ready for building strong national consortia have been identified, enabling a substantial expansion of DARIAH’s country coverage. Additionally, thematic workshops are organised in each country as well as tailored training measures.DESIR widens the research infrastructure in core areas which are vital for DARIAH’s sustainability but are not yet covered by the existing set-up. As DARIAH expands across Europe, continuously enhancing and further developing the ERIC exceeds DARIAH’s internal technological capacities. Two notable results were achieved so far: firstly, the publication of a technical reference as a result of a workshop organised in October 2017 with CESSDA and CLARIN. It’s a collection of basic guidelines and references for development and maintenance of infrastructure services within DARIAH and beyond, addressing an ongoing issue for research infrastructures, namely software sustainability. Secondly, the organisation of a Code Sprint, focusing on bibliographical and citation metadata, which helped shaping DARIAH’s profile in four technology areas (visualisation, text analytic services, entity-based search and scholarly content management). Another Code sprint is expected to take place in Summer 2019.Another output is the implementation of a centralized helpdesk. This helpdesk is hosted by CLARIN-D and the solution of integration within the existing DARIAH website was the creation of a WordPress plugin. This plugin is used to connect our website with the OTRS server and allows the creation of issues easily by users unfamiliar with OTRS.Sustaining a research infrastructure involves also two important aspects: trust and education. For DARIAH, it is crucial to increase trust and confidence from its users. In DESIR we develop recommendations and strategies accordingly, targeting new cross-disciplinary communities, based on the results of a survey and interviews addressed to the scientific community, with different levels of approach - national, institutional and individual.In addition, education is a key area and the project contributes to the ongoing discussions about the role and modalities of training and education in the development, consolidation and sustainability of digital research infrastructures. We believe that investing time and efforts into training and educating users is a way of securing the social sustainability of a research infrastructure.