Digital Technologies Expo
Donald Sturgeon: Models for Cyberinfrastructure
Many possible models exist for the development of cyberinfrastructure even within a single domain and for a given type of task. Approaches may be centralized or decentralized, anticipate various degrees of openness to external participation and development, and be more or less rigid as to the data and processes they are expected to support. This session introduces concrete examples of ongoing cyberinfrastructure development in Asian studies, and compares and contrasts their various approaches.
Relevant Link: https://digitalsinology.org/en/wiki/Main_Page
Shih-Pei Chen: RISE & SHINE: An interoperable, distributed, and secure e-infrastructure based on APIs
RISE stands for "Research Infrastructure for the Study of Eurasia." Formerly known as "Asia Network," it is a pioneering approach for resource dissemination and emerging data analytics (such as text mining and other fair-use but consumptive research techniques) in the humanities. Developed by MPIWG, RISE is a software that facilitates the secure linkage between third-party research tools to various third-party textual collections (both licensed and open-access ones) via a standardized set of application programming interfaces (APIs) called SHINE. SHINE facilitates the exchange of textual resources, both open-access ones and protected (or licensed) ones that require authentication and authorization. Resource providers and research tool developers will find SHINE useful because it supports interoperability among resource repositories and research tools in a decentralized manner. Researchers will find SHINE useful because they will gain unprecedented access to textual resources in a machine-readable format, so that textual resources can be analyzed in research tools in a seamless and legal research workflow (SHINE, as an exchange format, could be adopted independently to facilitate interoperability without RISE).
RISE and SHINE revolutionizes how scholars can work with textual sources because, in the current environment, it is impossible for scholars to use digital research tools to analyze licensed textual collections without downloading or scraping the full texts, which violates licensing terms. The RISE software can securely link these licensed texts to digital research tools, thus allowing scholars to work in a legal manner and ensuring commercial publishers the safety of their collections under a secured virtual research environment. Such flexible, networked approach to e-infrastructure development avoids re-creating silos of resources in the digital realm and allow scholars to fully leverage the potential of material digitization and digital research tools.
Relevant Link: https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/rise-and-shine-research-infrastructure-study-eurasia
Donald Sturgeon
Harvard University
Shih-Pei Chen
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany