Sharing Arts Practice Research FAIRly:

Developing best practice training and guidance to support the FAIR dissemination of arts practice research outputs

Presenter: Ed Kearns

Postdoctoral researcher, University of Limerick

Abstract

This lightning talk will share the work that the Sharing Arts Practice Research FAIRly project has been conducting to develop best practices and training for the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) dissemination of arts practice research. Ireland has a thriving landscape of innovative practice-based work in music, dance, theatre, and across the arts. However, to date, there is no national policy for the sustainable preservation and sharing of the digital outputs that artist researchers produce. Our project focuses on providing methods for those digital outputs to be seen and counted, and to align with FAIR principles. This talk will focus on the guidelines we have been developing for arts practice researchers and technical support staff, which have applications in other subject areas as well, particularly those with non-traditional research outputs. It will also detail the training we have conducted at our home institution, University of Limerick, on practical skills for representing digital research outputs on our institutional repository. This aspect is also applicable to subjects outside the arts. Our project is focused on providing practical solutions for giving non-traditional research outputs the platform they need, and this talk will bring that into broader conversations about open research.  

About

Ed Kearns is a digital humanities researcher who specialises in computational literary studies, databases, text encoding, and digital preservation. He completed his PhD in 2021 at the University of Galway; in his thesis he developed a new method of annotating and comparing narrative time disruptions in electronic and modernist fiction. Most recently he worked as a research assistant on the European Research Council-funded Theatronomics project at the University of Galway, creating a database of the finances of London’s eighteenth-century patent theatres. His current role is as a post-doctoral researcher with the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick, where he is developing best practices for FAIR dissemination of arts practice research outputs.