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Predicting the future of digital scholarly editions in the context of FAIR data principles

Chapter of: Digital editing and publishing in the twenty-first century

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Metadata
TitlePredicting the future of digital scholarly editions in the context of FAIR data principles
ContributorBartłomiej Szleszyński(author)
Agnieszka Szulińska(author)
Marta Błaszczyńska(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.62637/sup.GHST9020.7
Landing pagehttps://books.sup.ac.uk/sup/catalog/book/sup-9781917341073/chapter/8
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightBartłomiej Szleszyński, Agnieszka Szulińska and Marta Błaszczyńska
PublisherScottish Universities Press
Published on2025-04-29
Long abstractScholarly editing, understood by researchers working in the field of literary studies as providing the best versions of works along with explanatory and contextual layers, has been operating in the digital space for some time now. We are still searching for optimal ways to utilize its advantages. In parallel, there is a growing research reflection on the issue of data in digital humanities projects and ways to create, curate, and share it. The proposed paper, based on the experience of creating numerous digital scholarly editions (DSEs) and analyzing the issue of research data, addresses the following questions: 1) what the digital future of scholarly editing in literary studies might look like (also outside the circle of professional researchers), 2) how scholarly digital editions can be presented as datasets, 3) in what ways reflection on data can contribute to the broad utility of scholarly digital editions in literary studies. Apart from exploring some good practices employed by the TEI New Panorama of Polish Literature (NPLP) platform we also contemplate the data-related issues that remain to be addressed by the DSE community and the challenges that we might face while tackling them. Answering Joris van Zundert’s warning not to drive digital editing to a state of “a mere medium shift”, we propose to view DSEss as data on various levels, which is deeply anchored in the specificity of a digital humanist project. Having FAIR data principles in mind, we would like to expand this approach on several cases from the TEI NPLP platform, including i.a. 19th century novels, 20th-century correspondence of Polish poets, and contemporary Polish dramas.  For findability, a good example is the data layer related to entity descriptions (e.g., people, places, organizations) - in the editions on the TEI.NPLP.PL platform, we can search and compile all occurrences of entities and how they are referred to in the text. The principle of “accessibility” will be focused on the necessity of creating an account to use more advanced features in DSEs. We will reflect on when it is useful and when it might be skipped to provide rapid access to the content and the data.  The most challenging principles are “interoperability” and “reusability”. Much desired by many scholars, They are the goal of data curation and sharing initiatives, while at the same time they will enable the use of digital scholarly editions in numerous other scholarly projects beyond the specific discipline and, potentially, beyond the circle of professional researchers. In our text, we would like to present future opportunities and challenges of digital scientific editions in general and of the different data layers, DSE-s in particular.
Contributors

Bartłomiej Szleszyński

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7758-1662

Bartłomiej Szleszyński is Professor at the Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences; Head of the Department of Digital Scholarly Editions and Monographs responsible for creating and operating New Panorama of Polish Literature (NPLP.PL), a platform publishing digital scholarly collections, and TEI Panorama (TEI.NPLP.PL), a platform for scholarly digital editions; and Deputy Director of the Digital Humanities Centre. His main research interests are literature of the second half of the nineteenth century, colonial discourse in nineteenth-century Polish culture, literary Sarmatism, digital literary studies and scholarly digital editions.

Agnieszka Szulińska

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5778-6006

Agnieszka Szulińska (née Kochańska, b. 1989) graduated from Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw with an MA degree in Polish Philology (specialisation in scholarly editing). She prepares a PhD thesis about digital scholarly editing of literary texts in Poland, based on digital projects such as Poetry Group Skamander’s Correspondence or Early Novels of Eliza Orzeszkowa. A member of New Panorama of the Polish Literature team and the Digital Humanities Centre at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Apart from scholarly editing, her research areas include testing tools and platforms used in SSH scholarly communication, and video games. All important links here: https:// linktr.ee/agnieszkaszulinska.

Marta Błaszczyńska

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2377-4565

Marta Błaszczyńska defended her PhD thesis in social sciences at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Between 2019 and 2023 she worked at the Digital Humanities Centre at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. There she developed her skills and expertise in open science, qualitative research methods and data management. Marta co-created the Innovation Lab, part of OPERAS, Research Infrastructure supporting open scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in the European Research Area. Currently she works in the private sector within the field of fraud management.