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About

Focus and Scope

The Journal of Open Humanities Data (JOHD) features peer reviewed publications describing humanities data or techniques with high potential for reuse. The journal currently publishes two types of papers:

1. Short data papers: contain a concise description of a humanities research object with high reuse potential. These are short (1000 words) highly structured narratives and must conform to the Metapaper template. A data paper does not replace a traditional research article, but rather complements it.

2. Full length research papers discuss and illustrate methods, challenges, and limitations in the creation, collection, management, access, processing, or analysis of data in humanities research, including standards and formats. These are intended to be longer narratives (3000 - 5000 words), which give authors the ability to contribute to a broader discussion.

Both types of JOHD papers are fully peer reviewed to ensure that they are accurate and that the data or technique that they describe meet the journal’s criteria for publication. Data are not reviewed in terms of validity or importance, but rather to ensure that the descriptions or instructions for reuse are valuable to a community of interest. JOHD does not publish papers presenting results of or claims made by empirical research, nor do we publish reviews of existing literature.

Humanities subjects of interest to JOHD include, but are not limited to Art History, Classics, History, Library Science, Linguistics, Literature, Media Studies, Modern Languages, Music and musicology, Philosophy, Religious Studies, etc. Data that crosses one or more of these traditional disciplines are highly encouraged.

Publication Frequency

This journal publishes continuously, with papers coming online as soon as they have passed peer review.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. There is no embargo on the journal’s publications. Submission and acceptance dates, along with publication dates, are made available on the PDF format for each paper.

Authors of articles published remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to the Creative Commons license agreement.

Authors are encouraged to publish their data in recommended repositories. For a list of generic and subject specific repositories that meet our peer review criteria, see here.

Journal Archiving

The journal’s publisher, Ubiquity Press, focuses on making content discoverable and accessible through indexing services. Content is also archived around the world to ensure long-term availability.

The Journal of Open Humanities Data is indexed by the following services:

DOAJ, the MLA International Bibliography, Chronos, Center for Open Science, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers, OpenAIRE, ExLibris, Journal TOCs, CNKICrossRef, JISC KB+, SHERPA RoMEO, EBSCO KBEBSCOHost, Cengage Learning and Google Scholar. In addition, all journals are available for harvesting via OAI-PMH.

To ensure permanency of all publications, this journal also utilises CLOCKSS, and LOCKSS archiving systems to create permanent archives for the purposes of preservation and restoration.

If the Journal of Open Humanities Data is not indexed by your preferred service, please let us know by emailing support@ubiquitypress.com or alternatively by making an indexing request directly with the service.

Journal Statistics

Core journal statistics for the 2023 volume:

Submissions received176
Reviews requested2336
Reviews received3173
Total Rejections416
...of which, Desk rejects511
Acceptances649
Acceptance rate775%
Time from submission to publication886 days
  

Definitions
1Number of new articles received by the journal
2Number of peer review invitation emails that were sent out
3Number of completed peer review reports received
4Total number of articles rejected (including desk rejects)
5Number of articles rejected prior to peer review
6Number of articles that received a 'Accept for publication' decision
7Number of acceptances, as a percentage, against the total number of final decisions
8'Mean' average from submission to publication for all publications in the volume

The following repositories meet our peer-review requirements and are recommended for the archiving of JOHD datasets. Please contact us if you would like to recommend other repositories to us. 



Dataverse logo
Locationhttps://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/johd
Focus and suitabilityData can be uploaded to the JOHD Dataverse Repository designed specifically for papers in the Journal of Open Humanities Data. We recommended this repository to authors because it is managed entirely by the JOHD editorial staff and ensures maximum interoperability between datasets and data papers.
CostFree for all JOHD authors.
LicensesCC0
Identifiers usedDOI
SustainabilityThe Dataverse Network is an open-source application funded by Harvard University.
Deposit instructions

Depositing data into the Dataverse is currently done manually:

  1. Go to the following link: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/johd and register for an account.
  2. Once logged in, create a new study and follow the instructions to deposit your data. Ensure that your data conforms to the JOHD peer review requirements
  3. You will receive a handle ID shortly after your submit your data. Please add this to the identifier field of your data paper.
  4. Once your paper has passed peer-review, the JOHD team will add the citation to your Dataverse entry. 

Figshare logo
Locationhttp://figshare.com
Focus and suitabilityFigshare takes data from all subject areas, and is suitable for small to medium sized datasets that do not require specialised curation. Figshare allows you to share all of your data, negative results and unpublished figures.
CostFree. "Figshare gives users unlimited public space and 1GB of private storage space for free."
Licenses"All figures, media and multiple file uploads are published under a CC-BY license. All datasets are published under CC0."
Identifiers usedHandle
SustainabilityFigshare is an independent body that receives support from Digital Science. 'Digital Science's relationship with figshare represents the first of its kind in the company's history: a community- based, open science project that will retain its autonomy whilst receiving support from the division.
Deposit instructionsDepositing data associated with a JOHD data paper in Figshare is currently done manually:
  1. Create an account with figshare.
  2. Upload your data as either a fileset (most appropriate if you have multiple files) or a dataset.
  3. Check that your deposit also conforms to the JOHD peer review requirements.
  4. When the data has been made public on the figshare site, it will be assigned a handle identifier. Please enter this in your JOHD data paper under Repository Location.
  5. Once your JOHD paper has passed peer review and been published, please add the reference to the description field in figshare, and also add the JOHD DOI to the links.

Zenodo logo
Locationhttps://zenodo.org/
Focus and suitabilityZENODO welcomes all research outputs from all fields of science in any format and size. ZENODO is furthermore integrated into reporting lines for research funded by the European Commission via OpenAIRE. Ubiquity Press therefore recommends this repository for data funded by the European Commission.
CostFree
LicensesAny appropriate license accepted including CC0, Open Data Commons Licence, Open Government Licence.
Identifiers usedDOI
SustainabilityZENODO is developed and operated by CERN under the EU-funded OpenAIREplus project in synergy with other large services running on the same software such as CERN Document Server and INSPIRE-HEP. All uploads are stored in the same cloud infrastructure as research data from CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The entire platform is further more fully open - metadata is licensed under CC0, it's source code is licensed under GNU GPL and ZENODO furthermore allows harvesting of the entire repository by external sources.
Deposit instructions

To deposit data associated with a JOHD paper in ZENODO please follow these steps:

  1. Create an account with ZENODO.
  2. Upload your data and edit metadata such as title, description, authors.
  3. Check that your deposit also conforms to the JOHD peer review requirements.
  4. The data will go public immediately after submission and is instantly assigned a Digital Object Identifier. Please enter this in your JOHD paper under Repository Location.
  5. Once your JOHD paper has passed peer review and been published, please add the DOI and citation to the ZENODO Related Identifiers field.

SND logo
Locationhttp://snd.gu.se
Focus and suitabilityThe Swedish National Data Service (SND) is a service organization for Swedish research within the humanities, social sciences, and health sciences. SND helps enable Swedish and international researchers gain access to existing digital data within and outside of Sweden.
CostFree
LicensesDetermined by submitter: CC0 and CC-BY accepted.
Identifiers usedDOI
SustainabilitySND is funded by the Swedish Research Council as a national center located at University of Gothenburg, and an important part of Sweden’s research infrastructure.
Deposit instructions

To deposit data associated with a JOHD paper in SND please follow these steps:

  1. Visit the following link: http://snd.gu.se/en/deposit-data/webform
  2. Upload your data using the web form and input relevant metadata.
  3. Check that your deposit also conforms to the JOHD peer review requirements.
  4. You will receive a confirmation e-mail, and will then be contacted by SND staff about possible metadata and documentation issues.
  5. Once your JOHD paper has passed peer review and been published, please add the DOI and citation to the SND metadata.

DANS logo
Locationhttp://www.dans.knaw.nl/
Focus and suitabilityThe DANS data archive collection contains datasets in the fields of humanities, archaeology, geospatial sciences and behavioural and social sciences. 
CostFree
LicensesNo licence specified other than "open access". For more details please see DANS Conditions of Use on the reuse of deposited data.
Identifiers usedURN
SustainabilityDANS is funded by the Dutch government, and operates under the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
Deposit instructionsDepositing data associated with a JOHD data paper in the DANS data archive is currently done manually:
  1. Go to DANS and follow the instructions for depositing archaeological data.
  2. Check that your deposit also conforms to the JOHD peer review requirements.
  3. When the data has been made public on the DANS site, it will be assigned a URN identifier. Please enter this in your JOHD data paper under Repository Location.
  4. Once your JOHD paper has passed peer review and been published, please add this to the description field on the DANS Research Project screen.

Locationhttps://dspace-clarin-it.ilc.cnr.it/repository/xmlui/
Focus and suitabilityILC-CNR for CLARIN-IT is a CLARIN repository. CLARIN repositories help researchers in the Humanities and the Cultural and Social Sciences access, prepare and analyze research data. Typical
producers are Computational Linguists, Information and Communication Technologies experts, and Language Engineers who produce language data and digital tools to work with such data. Typical consumers of the infrastructure include students and researchers of all stages who are working in
the fields of the Humanities (linguists, philologists, historians...) and in the Social and Cultural Sciences (sociologists, political scientists, theologians, anthropologists) who are interested in analyzing language data and using text processing tools available in the CLARIN infrastructure.
CostFree for all JOHD authors.
Licenses

Any appropriate license accepted

Including CC0 and CC-BY 4.0 (more details in https://dspace-clarin-it.ilc.cnr.it/repository/xmlui/page/licenses)

Identifiers usedHandle system
SustainabilityItaly became a member of CLARIN ERIC in October 2015, 3 years after the establishment of CLARIN ERIC. The Italian Ministry of Education and Research awarded CNR a mandate to represent Italy as a representative Entity and a mandate to the Director of the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities to act as National Delegate in the General Assembly of the ERIC. The Institute for Computational Linguistics “A. Zampolli” was chosen as the Executing institution due to its key role in the development of Language Resources and Technologies over the last 50 years as well as the primary part that it has played in research and development in Computational Linguistics both nationally and internationally. It is therefore very unlikely that its mission will change in the future.
The mandates awarded by the Ministry have durations of five years. The initial mandate committed by the Ministry (payment of the membership and fees for five years, 2015-2019) has been renewed for additional five years (ending October 2025, prot m_pi.AOODGRIC.REGISTRO
UFFICIALE.U.0021661.05-12-2019). The Ministry will provide funding to sustain the implementation of the repository as described above.
The staff at ILC will ensure the ongoing development of the repository and the management of
all the activities connected with it in the form of in-kind contributions. The continued availability and accessibility of the data in the repository is guaranteed (along with documentation) until 2025. However, the mission of ILC is to provide long-term preservation of its diverse and extensive range of digital
resources, thereby ensuring continued access to these resources even after this date.
Deposit instructions

See https://dspace-clarin-it.ilc.cnr.it/repository/xmlui/page/item-lifecycle

Locationhttps://repo.sadilar.org/
Focus and suitabilitySADiLaR offers a variety of services that support the curation, development, distribution, and maintenance of (South African) language resources. These resources are made available through the SADiLaR Language Resource Repository as downloadable content.  Resources in the repository include: electronic text and speech data (such as domain-specific text collections, wordlists, dictionaries, translation memories and aligned multilingual corpora), multimodal resources, tools, applications and platforms that support the processing of data and development of new technologies.
CostFree
Licenses

Any appropriate license accepted

Identifiers usedHandle system
SustainabilitySADiLaR is funded by the South African Department of Science and Innovation.  It is a national research infrastructure with the hub located at North-West University.
Deposit instructions

Detailed deposit instructions can be found at
https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsadilar.org%2Findex.php%2Fen%2Fguidelines%2Fresource-guidelines&data=05%7C01%7Cbarbara.mcgillivray%40kcl.ac.uk%7C2a4da8d92423459147d808db58460862%7C8370cf1416f34c16b83c724071654356%7C0%7C0%7C638200830035100912%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=aX8g5H8tPHHTRUSoBMvngVGPPxKZN50PCdVUY31y7OM%3D&reserved=0

1. Login by following the link in the top right hand corner of the
SADiLaR repository
2. Click on the ‘Submissions’ item in the left hand panel.  Fill in the
form and upload your data.
3. Check that your deposit also conforms to the JOHD peer review
requirements.
4. When the data has been made public on SADiLaR's repository, it will
be assigned a handle identifier. Please enter this in your JOHD data
paper under Repository Location.
5. Once your JOHD paper has passed peer review and been published,
please add the reference to the description in the meta-data.

FAQ

What kinds of data can I publish?

All kinds of data are welcome, providing it is relevant to the humanities, as broadly defined. We are particularly interested in data that may have reuse potential or which is required to validate your research.

What is a data paper?

A data paper is a publication that is designed to make other researchers aware of data that is of potential use to them. As such it describes the methods used to create the dataset, its structure, its reuse potential, and a link to its location in a repository. It is important to note that a data paper does not replace a research article, but rather complements it. When mentioning the data behind a study, a research paper should reference the data paper for further details. The data paper similarly should contain references to any research papers associated with the dataset.

How do I submit a data paper?

Please see our ‘how to submit a data paper’ page.

How does JOHD peer review work?

Please see our overview of the peer review process.

Which open license should I apply to my data?

We recommend the following licenses for open data:

All of the above licenses carry an obligation for anyone using the data to properly attribute it. The main differences are whether this is a social requirement (CC0 and PDDL) or a legal one (CC-BY and ODC-BY). The less restrictive your license, the greater the potential for reuse.

We do not recommend licenses that impose commercial or other restrictions on the use of data. Generally, such licenses can prevent use of data by charities and the media, and make the remixing of data from various international sources legally problematic. At the same time, why impose commercial restrictions on publicly funded data, such that the public themselves are not able to build profitable or sustainable solutions that utilise it? There are of course some situations in which data must have a more restrictive license (e.g. funder requirements), and the editorial team will consider these on a case-by-case basis.

Which repositories do you recommend for humanities data?

Please see our list of recommended repositories for examples. Other repositories may be acceptable, provided they meet the criteria below. Please contact us if you would like to discuss adding a new repository to the recommended list.

What are the criteria for a repository to be accepted?

Data must be made available via a suitable repository. To meet our acceptance criteria, repositories must:

  • be suitable for the type of data involved
  • be sustainable (i.e. it must have funding and plans in place to ensure the long-term preservation of the data)
  • allow open licences
  • provide persistent identifiers (e.g. DOI, handle, ARC etc.)

What does ‘open’ mean?

The term ‘open’ in this context is well described by the Open Knowledge Foundation: “A piece of content or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike.”

What are the benefits of publishing data?

Allowing others to reuse your data leads to more efficient science, as well as new kinds of studies previously not possible that involve the combination of multiple data sources. At the same time open data can be reused by the wider public for a range of purposes including teaching, journalism and citizen science projects. These and other benefits are summarised in the diagram on our about page.

Making research outputs available for others to work with and build upon is part of the social contract of academia. Data papers mean that data you have released can be cited and that those citations can be tracked. This is not only an indirect measure of impact and therefore important for career progression, but it can also help you understand who is using the data, and lead to new collaborations.

Do I have to make my data open?

It is difficult to argue that the results of publicly funded research should not be made publicly available, and many funding bodies are increasing the degree to which they encourage open archiving. We believe that the benefits listed aboveare already a strong incentive to publish data openly, but there are some occasions (e.g. source material copyright issues, subject privacy concerns) where it may not be possible.

JOHD will however only publish data papers for datasets archived with open licenses. Datasets that need to be partially redacted for legal reasons will be considered by the editorial team on a case by case basis.

How do I cite data?

If you use data from a repository that has been released under an open license then you are obliged to cite it (even under a CC0 license). By citing the data paper you also reward the author for sharing their data, as these citations can be tracked as for any scholarly paper (unfortunately there is no system for tracking the data citations themselves yet, which is another reason that a data paper is so useful). You should therefore include a reference to the data paper describing the data, followed by a reference to the data in the repository itself. In order for this to work it is essential that the citations are in the references section of the article and include the DOIs (or any other identifier the repository might use), e.g.:

References

Bevan, A. and Conolly, J. (2012) Intensive Survey Data from Antikythera, Greece. Journal of Open Archaeology Data 1(1), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/4f3bcb3f7f21d

Bevan, A. and Conolly, J. (2012) The Antikythera Survey Project [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] (http://dx.doi.org/10.5284/1012484)

Do I have to pay to publish in this journal?

If your paper is accepted for publication, you will be asked to pay an Article Publication Charge (APC) to cover publications costs. Please, refer to the Publication Fees section of the Submissions webpage (under About). This fee can normally be sourced from your funder or institution, and we recommend approaching them about this at the time of submission.

You will be able to pay any amount from nothing to full charge, as we recognise that not all authors have access to funding, and we do not want fees to prevent the publication of worthy work. The editor and peer reviewers of the journal will not know what amount (if any) you have paid, and this will in no way influence whether your article is published or not.

Publication Ethics

Ubiquity Press, the journal’s publisher, is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP). The Press recognises its responsibility as a guardian of the scholarly record and takes an active role in establishing standards and policies in publication ethics.

The Editors of Journal of Open Humanities Data have committed to maintaining high editorial standards through rigorous peer review and strict ethical policies. The Editors follow the COPE code of conduct and refer to COPE for guidance as appropriate. The journal and the publisher ensure that advertising and commercial interests do not impact or influence editorial decisions.

The journal uses anti-plagiarism software to ensure academic integrity.

Annotation and post-publication comment

The journal platform permits readers to leave comments and in-browser annotations via hypothes.is. Readers will require a hypothes.is account to create annotations, and will have the option to make these public or private. Comments may be moderated by the journal, however, if they are non-offensive and relevant to the publication subject, comments will remain online without edit.

The journal only displays advertisements that are of relevance to its scope and will be of interest to the readership (e.g. upcoming conferences). All advertising space is provided free of charge and the editor and publisher have the right to decline or withdraw adverts at any point. Adverts will include a text heading to make it clear that they are adverts not related to the journal.

If you wish to propose a potential advert then please contact the editorial team. All advert images will have to be provided to the publisher.