The DARIAH WG RDM is a place where researchers, RDM and GLAM professionals have come together since 2020. On the basis of this interdisciplinary and international collaboration, we reflect in the panel on the role, formats and workflows of data publications to foster participatory science.

We will integrate moments of exchange with the audience into the panel to ensure the session remains as interactive and engaging as the available time and structure allow. After the following four short papers, the session will open into an extended discussion phase:

Andrea Farina: Data Papers as Catalysts for Participatory Humanities Research. Insights from the Journal of Open Humanities Data

This contribution examines how data papers can act as a bridge between academic and non-academic communities, drawing on a quantitative analysis of authorship and submission patterns within the Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD). Building on JOHD’s metadata, I will investigate trends in author backgrounds to assess how different communities participate in Humanities data publication. Particular attention will be given to thematic clusters and special collections, allowing us to explore correlations between topic areas, author provenance, and authorship roles (e.g., single or multi-authorship). Building on these empirical findings, I will reflect on how JOHD’s workflows – structured templates, reuse-oriented metadata, and low-threshold submission pathways – can foster a “virtuous circle” of participation. Rather than merely documenting datasets, data papers can help cultivate communities of practice and support contributors outside academia in publishing, preserving, and reusing Humanities data.

Ulrike Wuttke: Innovations in Science Communication related to data publications to invite and accommodate participation beyond academia

The development of new publication formats related to research data, such as the examples for data stories pioneered within the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) offers promising pathways to foster participatory science. These new formats lower barriers to understanding, engagement, enabling citizens, practitioners and policymakers to contribute insights, validate findings, and co-create knowledge. Thus they facilitate transparency, inclusivity, and collaboration, important aspects of participatory science’s creed of extending the scientific process to diverse societal actors.

Such innovative publication formats might enable participatory science by lowering entry barriers for non-academic actors. These innovations in science communication comprise communicative interfaces instead of static records (data sets, pdfs), and transform publications from endpoints to participatory platforms. Using concrete examples of innovations in data publications, departing from data papers such as from the ZfDG and moving then onwards towards data stories, incentives (democratization of knowledge, visibility) and obstacles (limited data literacy, academic reward system) will be explored from the perspective of the SeDOA Innovation Lab to explore their potential to strengthen and diversify Diamond Open Access publishing.

Alessia Spadi: Editorial workflows for open, accessible, and community-driven research sharing

The present discussion highlights two intertwined aspects of scientific communication: how the academic community can share its work in more accessible formats for broader audiences, and how citizen scientists can, in turn, disseminate their findings within a moderated, scientifically oriented environment.

This contribution introduces OpenMethods as an environment to foster reuse of research data, offering new pathways for participation beyond traditional scholarly publishing. OpenMethods is a metablog dedicated to Digital Humanities methods and tools that highlights already published open access content to make it more discoverable for both scholars and non-specialists. Its mission is not to host original research, but to circulate methodological knowledge and support the community in identifying valuable resources scattered across diverse platforms, languages, and formats. A core feature of OpenMethods is its collaborative editorial workflow, which relies on volunteer contributors and an expert Editorial Team.

Beth Knazook, Joan Murphy, Engagement for Sustainability - The Research Sustainability Workflow for the Humanities

The Research Sustainability Workflow for the Humanities considers engagement a critical factor in the sustainability of data and other research outputs. It centres the importance of developing partnerships to support research dissemination and engagement, highlighting the value of repositories, publicly funded institutions and communities as stewards of data with continuing cultural and social value.

This contribution situates participatory science as an enabler of long-term preservation and data reuse and aims to help Humanities researchers think through stewardship in terms of engagement timelines and audience needs. By thinking of repositories as infrastructures of engagement rather than simply storage, researchers better ensure the likelihood of their data remaining online, active, and reusable over time.

Alongside practical recommendations this presentation will also help researchers to understand and apply appraisal techniques and archival thinking to their data projects to ensure that diverse outputs are able to be sustained for as long as necessary.