FORTEXT - digital research environment for collaborative text exploration

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jan Christoph Meister
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 320411126

The objective of FORTEXT is to develop and provide to the research community a virtual platform focusing on two of the core heuristic activities of philological text exploration: collaborative text annotation and text analysis. FORTEXT is conceptually based on the notion of hermeneutic markup (Piez 2010) and therefore aims to support these activities through a method which consciously acknowledges the hermeneutic practice of non-deterministic, discursive markup and exploration of textual meaning. In following this non-deterministic approach FORTEXT responds to a key desideratum ignored by most of the digital tools and platforms hitherto developed for humanities text research. Apart from the practical aspect, developing methodological sensitivity for the specifics of discursive hermeneutic practices is also a strategic necessity: FORTEXT is conceptual compatibility with traditional hermeneutic practices aims to promote acceptance for digital humanities tools and services in the philologies, a well as in other text oriented humanities disciplines.FORTEXT comprises four complementing sub-goals mapped onto corresponding work packages:1. Configuration and integration of tools, interfaces and services focusing on the primary use cases ¿interactive/collaborative text annotation / text analyses.2. Development of tools und digital services which can provide automated, auxiliary annotation and analysis routines.3. Design and implementation of a functional recommender module that will support ongoing work flows by way of generating adequate, use case specific workflow suggestions in real time.4. Consulting and dissemination strategies which specifically adress the scientific communities of the philologies and textual studies oriented disciplines with a view to create a conceptual buy in.The point of departure for FORTEXT¿s technology development is CATMA 5.0 (www.catma.de), a robust web service for collaborative text annotation which is presently used by some 80 research projects worldwide. In addition, FORTEXT also draws on heureCLÉA, a BMBF (German Ministry of Education and Research) funded project concluded in 1/2016. The CATMA system backend to be further developed and extended by FORTEXT is hosted and maintained within the University of Hamburg IT centre¿s server cluster. The digital repository capturing all primary and meta data is also mirrored at three off-site locations (Uni Heidelberg as well as two commercial data centers in Europe). Extending on this triple-redundant architecture it is planned to also integrate FORTEXT¿s productive repository (in encapsuled format) within one of the research data infrastructures (e.g.,TextGrid, DARIAH-DE, CLARIN) that provide a long term sustainable solution.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)