The Epistemic Cultures of the Digital Humanities and their relation to Open Science: contributions to the Open Humanities discourse

Abstract

The humanities reflect a great disciplinary diversity, marked by different practices of knowledge production, which do not have a deep-rooted tradition of using computer-based methods in their research processes. Digital Humanities (DH) follow an interdisciplinary orientation, which can bring together a series of experimental approaches to some central questions of the humanities, applying computational methods, but not only. DH are comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and heterogeneous and are characterized by a great diversity of practices, which correspond to different epistemic cultures. The discourse around Open Science (OS) seems to reflect a more focused discourse on scientific research and communication practices, fundamentally inspired by the hard sciences, which does not seem to consider the peculiarities and characteristics of the digital humanities fully. The main goal of this work is to reflect on the inclusion of the epistemic cultures of DH in the OS discourse. As specific goals, it is proposed (i) to describe the concept of epistemic cultures, particularly in DH, (ii) to identify the approaches adopted by OS and relate them to those of DH, and (iii) to discuss the need for the existence of a discourse dedicated to the opening of the humanities and to prove that DH contributes to it. An exploratory qualitative approach was adopted, by conducting a literature review aiming to contextualize the approach of epistemic cultures, particularly about DH and its relationship with OS. The practices and environment for building scientific knowledge of DH were related to the principles of OS, considering the multidimensionality of the scientific communication system. The conclusion is that the OS adopts a unified view of science, not considering the different epistemic cultures, especially about the digital humanities, and therefore, a specific discourse around the opening of the scientific process in this area is necessary.