Digital Skills for Open Research Practices in the Arts and Humanities

The Digital Skills in Arts and Humanities Network (DISKAH) (www.diskah.org) aims to expand access to and use of Digital Research Infrastructures (DRI) for researchers, practitioners, and research technical professionals across Arts and Humanities disciplines. Skills in open science approaches, including data curation and management, reproducibility, and governance are key aspects. DISKAH supports the community in navigating and engaging with these approaches and infrastructures through a dedicated fellowship programme. Through their projects, the DISKAH fellows enhance their skills in developing digital research workflows, demonstrating the dependencies between DRI and data-driven research, and exploring how DRI can facilitate Open research practices. The fellowship programme includes dedicated co-designed training activities, opportunities for hands-on experimentation with DRI, technical support from digital Research Technical Professionals, and a range of events and networking opportunities for community collaboration. With the first round of DISKAH fellowships recently completed, fellows’ experiences have highlighted their personalised user journeys to navigate the DRI landscape, the need for use-cases which serve as examples of research workflows and open science practices, as well as the desire to collaborate with other disciplines within the UK and beyond to tackle common challenges.