HomeDigital Humanities in the Web 3.0 Era
Digital Humanities in the Web 3.0 Era
Les humanités numériques à l’ère du web 3.0
Published on Tuesday, July 05, 2022
Abstract
The publication of critical editions and their use for scientific purposes—two essential realities for research in the humanities—have transformed considerably in step with the digital revolutions of our time. With the adoption of the Open Science principles and their dissemination within the scientific community, the Web has become an indispensable place for the publication and digital exploitation of source texts. All things considered, we are still a long way from exploiting the full potential of Web 3.0 (the Web of data). This issue of Methodos aims to explore new methodologies, technologies, standards, data models, computational tools and applications that allow the integration of major aspects of Web 3.0 into digital editions, including: the Semantic Web, Artificial Intelligence, automatic natural language processing, and visualization or graphical representation of data.
Announcement
Guest Editor
Roberta Padlina
Argument
The publication of critical editions and their use for scientific purposes—two essential realities for research in the humanities—have transformed considerably in step with the digital revolutions of our time. With the adoption of the Open Science principles and their dissemination within the scientific community, the Web has become an indispensable place for the publication and digital exploitation of source texts. The development of Digital Humanities over the last few years is reflected in the multiplication of online editions and their presentation and interrogation interfaces. However, there is still no standard system for encoding and analysing texts. All things considered, we are still a long way from exploiting the full potential of Web 3.0 (the Web of data). To take just one example, the Text Encoding Initiative guidelines serialized in XML—the de facto standard for digital editions—has shown its limits in the transition to Linked Open Data, especially with regard to compliance with the FAIR (findable-accessible-interoperable-reusable) principles, which are the criterion and key to the success of scholarly digital editions in the Web 3.0 era.
What is lacking today, above all, is a formal and methodological framework that is both exhaustive and stable and that ensures an optimal integration of new technologies in the field of editions and their digital fruition. In order to exploit the potential of Web 3.0, and thus open up new possibilities in the field of Digital Humanities, it is first and foremost necessary to enable a meaningful connection and true interoperability between the data sets and the objectives and standards of their scientific exploitation. To achieve this interoperability, it is crucial to create formal models that express accurately (while remaining open to different interpretations and degrees of certainty) the semantics of the data and knowledge related to the edited texts. These models must be able not only to capture the (often incomplete, fragmented and ambiguous) nature of edited texts and their historical, cultural and conceptual contexts, but also to enable the documentation and validation of the entire editorial and scholarly decision-making process. What is fundamental is that the semantics—and not only the structure and syntax—of encoded texts should be formalized in such a way that it can be understood and interpreted by both human agents and machines.
This issue of Methodos aims to explore new methodologies, technologies, standards, data models, computational tools and applications that allow the integration of major aspects of Web 3.0 into digital editions, including: the Semantic Web (up to the highest and not yet standardized layers, i.e., unifying logic, proof, and trust), Artificial Intelligence (machine learning and machine reasoning), automatic natural language processing, and visualization or graphical representation of data.
This call for papers is therefore addressed to researchers and research projects from any discipline within the scope of the humanities and social sciences (esp. linguistics and philology, literary studies, history and philosophy, sociology of scientific innovation, logic and argumentation theory) that produce or use digital editions, and that call upon innovative computational methods, models and tools for the transcription, collation, elaboration and analysis of texts. Particular attention will be paid to studies that, on the one hand, integrate a fundamental reflection on computer science and its principles (mathematical and logico-formal, epistemological and semantic), and, on the other hand, propose solutions that are easily implementable, usable and which take into account the specific needs of researchers in the humanities.
The aim is to interrogate the state of the art of the relationship between digital theories and digital practices with a particular focus on editing text and from the standpoint of scientific research which makes textual editions its privileged support. Moreover, in line with what Digital Humanities should be—namely, a whole that is more and better than its parts—this interrogation should comprise a holistic and encompassing double perspective, consisting in: 1) an evaluation of the potentiality, challenges and impact on the methodologies and conceptual architecture of the application of new technologies to editing and textual analysis; and 2) a consideration of the specific requirements of research in the humanities, particularly in terms of the definition of a formal standard framework adapted to this type of data processing in view of its development, stabilization, standardization and dissemination.
Submission guidelines
Paper Proposals Submission Deadline: 20 January 2023
Paper proposals (2500 characters) are to be sent electronically, in Word and PDF formats, to:
Leone Gazziero (leone.gazziero@univ-lille.fr) and Anne Dourlens (anne.dourlens@univ-lille.fr).
Papers Submission Deadline: 20 May 2023
Once a proposal has been accepted, authors will send their text in accordance with the guidelines described under « Author guidelines » (http://methodos.revues.org/2124).
Accepted languages: English, French, German, Italian.
Subjects
- Thought (Main category)
- Mind and language > Thought > Philosophy
- Mind and language > Language > Linguistics
- Mind and language > Information > Information sciences
- Mind and language > Information > Electronic publishing
- Society > Science studies > Philosophy of science
- Society > History
- Mind and language > Epistemology and methodology
Date(s)
- Friday, January 20, 2023
Attached files
Keywords
- Digital Humanities, web of data, digital edition, semantic web, artificial intelligence, automatic natural language processing
Contact(s)
- Leone Gazziero
courriel : leone [dot] gazziero [at] univ-lille [dot] fr
Reference Urls
Information source
- Anne Dourlens
courriel : anne [dot] dourlens [at] univ-lille [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Digital Humanities in the Web 3.0 Era », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, July 05, 2022, https://doi.org/10.58079/197h