A Federated Commons | Building the Commons

Posted on December 13, 2022 by OATP primary

by Mike Thicke

Twitter’s recent troubles have catalyzed unprecedented attention on Mastodon as an alternative. In turn, this has introduced many to the Fediverse—a loose collection of services that, like Mastdodon, use the ActivityPub protocol to communicate with each other.

At Humanities Commons, we have long considered ActivityPub to be the most promising way to expand from our current, single-site, structure to a network of associated Commonses. We have taken Mastodon as an inspiration and model for a new, federated Commons network.

I hope to use this blog both to keep users at Humanities Commons informed of our plans and progress toward this goal of a renewed Commons and Commons network, but to also have conversations with all of you about our direction, about how we can best serve your needs, and about how you can contribute to our journey.

In this post, I want to describe in general terms how the Commons functions as a pseudo-network now, some of the challenges we’ve experienced with that structure, and how a federated or decentralized Commons might address those problems. In future posts I will go into more detail about how different components of the site—such as profiles, groups, sites, and the repository—might function in a federated Commons, as well as discussions of how we plan to implement all of this.

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Humanities Commons Launches Mastodon Server Open to Scholars | Platypus, the Humanities Commons blog

Posted on November 8, 2022 by OATP primary

Anyone using or observing Twitter will be well aware of the recent purchase of the company, which throws the future of the platform into, at best, uncertainty, and at worst, turmoil.

In response, many scholars have been considering a move to Mastodon, a non-profit, federated alternative social network. Being federated, Mastodon requires access to a server (here’s more on how Mastodon works), which is where we come in.

In response to community requests and our own recognition of the potential in this moment, we are launching hcommons.social, a Mastodon server open to all scholars (which we take to include: researchers, librarians, instructors, students, staff and anyone else with an active interest in research and education.) While we expect this space to lean Humanities-heavy, we leave it up to users whether it feels like the place they want to be. To start, there will be no limit on sign-ups, though we will review that policy over time as we learn more about the costs and overhead of managing the server.

We’ve moved quickly to get this up and running, and are doing so in the spirit of experimentation. We’ve never done this before. Many of the people who use it will probably not have either. So we’re going to have to figure things out together!

To start, we are putting in place:

Server rules that prioritize harm reduction and will be enforced via…
A clear moderation policy,

And if you’re new to Mastodon, a wonderful HC user has created an excellent guide to getting started.

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NSF Grant for New STEM-focused Commons | Platypus – the Humanities Commons Blog

Posted on August 17, 2022 by OATP primary

by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

The Commons team is delighted to have been awarded one of the inaugural FAIROS RCN grants from the NSF, in order to establish DBER+ Commons. That’s a big pile of acronyms, so here’s a breakdown: the NSF is of course the National Science Foundation, one of the most important federal funding bodies in the United States, and a new funder for us. The FAIROS RCN grant program was launched this year by the NSF in order to invest in Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable Open Science (FAIROS) by supporting the formation and development of Research Coordination Networks (RCN) dedicated to those principles.

We have teamed up with a group of amazing folks at Michigan State University who are working across science, technology, engineering, math, and more traditional NSF fields, all of whom are focused on discipline-based education research (DBER) as well as other engaged education research methodologies (the +). Our goal for this project is to bring them together with their national and international collaborators in STEM education to create DBER+ Commons, which will use — and crucially, expand — the affordances of the HCommons network and promote FAIR and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) practices, principles, and guidelines in undergraduate, postbaccalaureate, graduate, and postdoctoral science education research activities.

Guest Post: A.L. McMichael on Open Source Announcements – Platypus

Posted on December 18, 2021 by peter.suber's bookmarks

“To celebrate five years of Humanities Commons, I’d like to highlight one of my favorite ways to use it: simplifying administrative outreach. You can use a group’s “Discussion” feature as an alternative to a listserv or newsletter (for a lab, a project, a class, or any other organization)….”

Humanities Commons Receives $971,000 Mellon Grant to Support Its Expansion – College of Arts & Letters

Posted on October 5, 2021 by OATP primary

“Humanities Commons, which is hosted and sustained by Michigan State University and led by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Digital Humanities for MSU’s College of Arts & Letters, was awarded a $971,000, 5-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a multi-year restructuring of its business model.

An online open-source platform, Humanities Commons facilitates communication and collaboration among scholars and practitioners across the humanities and around the world. It enables users to engage in discussions across humanities disciplines and to share articles, presentations, and other scholarly materials with their peers and the public. Members also create online professional profiles to help connect with others and to share their work more broadly. …”

Job: User Engagement Specialist, Humanities Commons – Fixed Term

Posted on August 27, 2021 by OATP primary

The user engagement specialist will facilitate active engagement and participation among individual Commons users. The specialist will work as part of a team to ensure user success through the development of documentation and training materials, as well as working with the help desk team on user support processes. The user engagement specialist will work with the community development manager in developing strategies for onboarding the individual users at new participating organizations and institutions and will track relevant metrics with respect to community growth and platform use for incorporation into regular reports. The specialist will also oversee the Commons’ social media and communication strategies and will manage the platform’s outreach via those accounts.

Job: Community Development Manager, Humanities Commons – Outreach-Fixed Term

Posted on August 27, 2021 by OATP primary

The community development manager will work toward sustainable, accountable business growth for the Commons by cultivating interest in the network among scholarly organizations and institutions, and working to bring them in as participating members. The manager will work as part of a team to onboard new organizations and institutions and to ensure their success through the development of documentation and training materials, as well as ongoing communication and support. The community development manager will work with the team to develop a strategy for bringing new organizations into the Commons and will work with the project director to develop regular reporting mechanisms that track community growth and financial impact, and to organize and convey feedback to the development team.

Humanities Commons | Giving to Michigan State University

Posted on December 2, 2020 by peter.suber's bookmarks

“Humanities Commons is an open-source, open-access network serving scholars and practitioners across humanities disciplines and around the world. More than 23,000 registered users have created profiles and are collaborating and sharing their work with their colleagues and with the public. Our users are faculty members, graduate students, librarians, teachers, writers, researchers, and more. Humanities Commons gives all of them the means to help their work change the world….

Contributions to this campaign will help Humanities Commons reach more scholars and scholarly organizations around the world, strengthening their collaborations and enabling them to make more of their work public. Expanding the network will also make it possible for teachers and students everywhere to find and use cutting-edge research in the humanities….”

Infrastructure and Capacity Building – Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Posted on January 16, 2020 by peter.suber's bookmarks

“I was delighted this week to be notified that the Humanities Commons team has received an Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities….”

Infrastructure and Capacity Building