Project Overview
ABOUT

The ATLAS guidelines were developed within the PRIN 2022 ATLAS project, a joint effort of the University of Bologna, the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and the CNR Unit of Pisa (comprising the Institute for Computational Linguistics “A. Zampolli”—ILC—and the Institute of Information Science and Technologies “Alessandro Faedo”—ISTI). ATLAS has two main objectives:

1. creating a catalogue of Digital Humanities Research on Italian Cultural Heritage, using semantic web technologies to establish a framework that captures diverse DH research outputs, and
2. developing clear and practical guidelines for creating high-quality scholarly data.

The ATLAS guidelines are built upon the existing recommendations of the ALLEA Working Group for E-Humanities: Sustainable and FAIR Data Sharing in the Humanities.

While the ALLEA guidelines are broad in scope, we created a complementary tool that offers specific, practical advice for applying FAIR principles to common DH research outputs: digital scholarly editions, text collections, software tools, linked open datasets, and ontologies. We identified best practices, reference standards, and tools for implementing FAIR principles in the design, development, and maintenance of these outputs.

These guidelines are primarily aimed at Digital Humanities scholars seeking to learn about or deepen their understanding of FAIR principles, focusing on how to put them into practice when creating their research outputs. Additionally, the guidelines are also suitable for scholars who are (relatively) new to DH and wish to explore this field’s distinctive research products, along with their respective best practices and reference standards.

The guidelines are divided into sections by output type. Each section provides a set of recommendations that cover the phases of a digital object’s life cycle—aligning with the framework proposed in the ALLEA recommendations, as illustrated below.

Figure 1 - Life cycle of FAIR research data in the humanities. Credits: ALLEA E-Humanities Working Group.

To help you identify which ALLEA phases each recommendation corresponds to, you will find the following tags next to each recommendation:

• IDENTIFY - recommendations focused on identifying your own research data, community standards, best practices, and existing resources such as tools and datasets that may be useful;
• PLAN - recommendations about planning your research product lifecycle and what to consider from creation through publication and maintenance;
• PRODUCE - recommendations for creating and formatting your research product, with particular attention to formats, metadata, and data models;
• DEPOSIT - recommendations for properly depositing and preserving your research data, including considerations for licences and legal aspects;
• DISSEMINATE - recommendations on how to effectively reach your audience and make your data (re-)usable.

The ATLAS guidelines provide also a set of additional recommendations to enhance the quality of research outputs beyond FAIR principles, making them easier to cite, use, and assess. These recommendations address common shortcomings we discovered while reviewing research outputs.

Before exploring our guidelines, we strongly recommend reading the ALLEA recommendations first and other external resources, especially if you are new to FAIR principles. To help you get started, we provide a concise summary of the ALLEA recommendations below, giving you an overview of the key concepts and helping you identify which areas require deeper study.