DEVELOPING AN ONLINE PLATFORM TO SUPPORT RESEARCH AGENDA DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT IN ENGLAND
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 24/12/2020

My contribution will describe work funded by Historic England to develop a new generation of ‘research frameworks’ for archaeology in England. These publications traditionally have been presented as monograph publications, or as static .pdf electronic publications. They are intended for use to guide the design of new investigative projects, setting the research agenda or research questions that new investigations should seek to answer. By doing this they help to co-ordinate the resources available for research to obtain the most useful knowledge, and show the public value of archaeological work. I will briefly review the need for better ways to develop, publish and manage research frameworks that has been established by previous user research. I will then describe the opportunities that arise from migrating these research frameworks to a digital platform. Principally these are that: the content can be structured to make access easier for those who need to commission new research; the content can be more easily kept up to date; and the content can be searched across all the research frameworks using the common platform. I will outline how the adoption of shared standards for organising and indexing the content offers the possibility that a common platform could be used to develop, publish and manage research frameworks, initially in England, but potentially from any number of different administrative regions and states.


Author(s): Lee, Edmund (HE - Historic England)