PurposeThis paper proposes a new perspective on the enormous and unresolved challenge to existing practices of publication and documentation posed by the outputs of digital research projects in the humanities, where much good work is being lost due to resource or technical challenges.Design/methodology/approachThe paper documents and analyses both the existing literature on promoting sustainability for the outputs of digital humanities projects and the innovative approach of a single large-scale project.FindingsThe findings of the research presented show that sustainability planning for large-scale research projects needs to consider data and technology but also community, communications and process knowledge simultaneously. In addition, it should focus not only on a project as a collection of tangible and intangible assets, but also on the potential user base for these assets and what these users consider valuable about them.Research limitations/implicationsThe conclusions of the paper have been formulated in the context of one specific project. As such, it may amplify the specificities of this project in its results.Practical implicationsAn approach to project sustainability following the recommendations outlined in this paper would include a number of uncommon features, such as a longer development horizon, wider perspective on project results, and an audit of tacit and explicit knowledge.Social ImplicationsThese results can ultimately preserve public investment in projects.Originality/valueThis paper supplements more reductive models for project sustainability with a more holistic approach that others may learn from in mapping and sustaining user value for their projects for the medium to long terms.

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How does technology impact research practices in the humanities? How does digitisation shape scholarly identity? How do we negotiate trust in the digital realm? What is scholarship, what forms can it take, and how does it acquire authority?This diverse set of essays demonstrate the importance of asking such questions, bringing together established and emerging scholars from a variety of disciplines, at a time when data is increasingly being incorporated as an input and output in humanities sources and publications. Major themes addressed include the changing nature of scholarly publishing in a digital age, the different kinds of ‘gate-keepers’ for scholarship, and the difficulties of effectively assessing the impact of digital resources. The essays bring theoretical and practical perspectives into conversation, offering readers not only comprehensive examinations of past and present discourse on digital scholarship, but tightly-focused case studies.This timely volume illuminates the different forces underlying the shifting practices in humanities research today, with especial focus on how humanists take ownership of, and are empowered by, technology in unexpected ways. Digital Technology and the Practices of Humanities Research is essential reading for scholars, students, and general readers interested in the changing culture of research practices in the humanities, and in the future of the digital humanities on the whole.

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First and foremost, the editor of this volume would like to thank the European Science Foundation for making possible both the original working group along with its meetings, and this open access publication. The NeDiMAH network continues to be a point of reference for scholars who are exploring not just how to use digital methods in the humanities and what it means to do this, but also what is at stake in the digital turn for our diverse and yet interconnected disciplines. It would be remiss not to also thank the participants in the NeDiMAH events: their contributions to that early discussion are woven into the fabric of this volume and the issues it pursues. In particular, I would like to thank the Zadar meeting group:

AbstractsThe Collaborative EuropeaN Digital Archival Research Infrastructure (CENDARI) project has developed a new virtual environment for humanities research, reimagining the analogue landscape of research sources for medieval and modern history and humanities research infrastructure models for the digital age. To achieve this, the project has needed to be sensitive to the ways in which historical research practices in the 21st Century are distinct from those of earlier eras, harnessing the affordances of technology to reveal connections and support or refute hypotheses, enabling transnational approaches, and federating sources beyond the well-known and across the largely national organization paradigms that dominate within traditional knowledge infrastructures (libraries, archives and museums). This paper describes both the usercentered development methodology deployed by the project and the resulting technical architecture adopted to meet these challenging requirements. The resulting system is a robust 'enquiry environment' able to integrate a variety of data types and standards with bespoke tools for the curation, annotation, communication and validation of historical insight.

This article introduces a frame of reference for understanding the fundamental challenges that inform digital humanities as an interdisciplinary research area between arts, humanities, information, and computer science. Its conclusions are based upon the evidence base developed within an EU-funded collaboration known as Knowledge Complexity, or KPLEX for short (www.kplex-project.eu), in particular via the project’s thirty-eight linked interviews about big data research. When viewed from the perspective of the digital humanities, five distinct points of ‘aporia’ with a significant impact on digital humanities (DH) appear in this corpus, places where the interviewees explicitly or tacitly expose gulfs between the epistemic cultures that contribute to DH and that create tensions between these disciplines, even as they seek to collaborate. This article will explore these areas of apparent irreconcilability, and conclude with a series of reflections on how digital humanities researchers might build upon their unique competency profile to negotiate within these critical conversations, in particular in the framework of the emerging subfield of critical digital humanities.