We are very pleased about the funding decision of the Joint Science Conference (GWK) for the NFDI consortium Text+. Text+ is one of 10 consortia in the second round of calls for proposals for the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) to be funded by the federal and state governments for an initial period of five years from October 2021.
The aim of Text+ is to establish a demand-oriented infrastructure for research data from language and text-based sciences in the NFDI, which strives to sustainably secure and provide research data from cultural heritage. The consortium focuses on three data domains: language and text-based collections, lexical resources and editions. With this focus, the consortium addresses needs from various disciplines in the humanities, including linguistics, literature, philosophy, classical philology, anthropology, non-European cultures and languages as well as language and text-based research in the social sciences, economics, political science and history.
“The Cologne office will coordinate the ‘Editions’ data pillar within the consortium.”
At the University of Cologne there will be a central office of the consortium, which will be set up at the Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH) as part of the long-standing cooperation with the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts (AWK). The Cologne office will coordinate the “Editions” data column within the consortium. The AWK is represented in the consortium as one of five supporting institutions, while the University of Cologne is also involved as a participant with the Data Center for the Humanities (DCH). The project is coordinated by the Leibniz Institute for the German Language Mannheim (IDS), with the participation of four co-applicant institutions: the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the German National Library Frankfurt/Leipzig, the Göttingen State and University Library of Lower Saxony and the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.
Prof. Dr. Löwer, President of the AWK, and Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Speer, Chairman of the CCeH and co-applicant of Text+, emphasize the importance of the consortium in the NFDI: “With Text+, we want to make a contribution to the text-based sciences, to secure this data in the long term and, above all, to make it easier for researchers worldwide to find it. Text+ is therefore – if you like – another central building block for safeguarding our cultural heritage.”
In addition to Text+, other consortia with Cologne participation were also successful in the second round of tenders. We are delighted that, with a total of nine consortium participations at the University of Cologne(https://fdm.uni-koeln.de/netzwerkuzk/nfdi-uebersicht), a strong university node is emerging within the NFDI with great potential for local interdisciplinary collaboration.
Further information: https://www.text-plus.org/.
GWK press release: https://www.gwk-bonn.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/Dokumente/Pressemitteilungen/pm2021-04.pdf
Press release of the University of Cologne: https://portal.uni-koeln.de/universitaet/aktuell/berichte/textplus
Central Coordination Office Digital Humanities of the AWK at the CCeH: https://cceh.uni-koeln.de/koordinierungsstelle-dh/