Digging into Data

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The advent of what has been called “data-driven inquiry” or “cyberscholarship” has changed the nature of inquiry across many disciplines, including the sciences and humanities, revealing new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration on problems of common interest. The creation of vast quantities of Internet accessible digital data and the development of techniques for large-scale data analysis and visualization have led to remarkable new discoveries in genetics, astronomy, and other fields, and—importantly—connections between academic disciplinary areas. New techniques of large-scale data analysis allow researchers to discover relationships, detect discrepancies, and perform computations on data sets that are so large that they can be processed only using computing resources and computational methods developed and made economically affordable within the past few years. With books, newspapers, journals, films, artworks, and sound recordings being digitized on a massive scale, it is possible to apply data analysis techniques to large collections of diverse cultural heritage resources as well as scientific data. How might these techniques help scholars use these materials to ask new questions about and gain new insights into our world? To encourage innovative approaches to this question, four international research organizations are organizing a joint grant competition to focus the attention of the social science and humanities research communities on large-scale data analysis and its potential application to a wide range of scholarly resources. The goals of the initiative are to promote the development and deployment of innovative research techniques in large-scale data analysis; to promote international collaboration; to foster interdisciplinary collaboration among scholars in the humanities, social sciences, computer sciences, information sciences, and other fields, around questions of text and data analysis; and to work with data repositories that hold large digital collections to ensure efficient access to these materials for research. In recognition of the international nature of cyberinfrastructure/e-science, the Digging into Data Challenge will bring together international research teams to advance research and to share their results openly, so that others may learn from them. The Digging into Data Challenge competition is sponsored by four leading funders from three countries: The Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC); The U.K. Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC); The U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH); and The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). This Request for Proposals (RFP) explains how to apply to the Digging into Data Challenge. Please note that each funder has also produced an RFP Addendum with information specific to that funder. Each funder will have different rules and requirements, depending on its mission and its policies and procedures. Therefore, before you apply you should carefully read this RFP as well as the RFP Addenda for any of the funders to which you wish to apply. All of these documents are available on the Digging into Data Challenge Web site. (www.diggingintodata.org).

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