Methodological commons: arts and humanities e-Science fundamentals.

The application of e-Science technologies to disciplines in the arts and humanities raises major questions as to how those technologies can be most usefully exploited, what tools and infrastructures are needed for that exploitation, and what new research approaches can be generated. This paper reviews a number of activities in the UK and Europe in the last 5 years which have sought to address these questions through processes of experimentation and targeted infrastructure development. In the UK, the AHeSSC (Arts and Humanities e-Science Support Centre) has played a coordinating role for seven projects funded by the Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative. In Europe, DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) has sought to develop a deeper understanding of research information and communication in the arts and humanities, and to inform the development of e-infrastructures accordingly. Both sets of activity have indicated a common requirement: to construct a framework which consistently describes the methods and functions of scholarly activity which underlie digital arts and humanities research, and the relationships between them. Such a 'methodological commons' has been formulated in the field of the digital humanities. This paper describes the application of this approach to arts and humanities e-Science, with reference to the early work of DARIAH and AHeSSC.