Social and Cultural Informatics Platform

At our June Steering Committee meeting, Dr Arif Jubaer gave a presentation about SCIP, the Social and Cultural Informatics Platform, whose mission is to support data and informatics needs in the humanities, social sciences, education, visual arts, and performing arts. He emphasised that SCIP is always open to broader collaboration and engagement, and that common ground can always be found if you are looking to collaborate with any SCIP partner.

SCIP offer walk-in consultation hours twice a week, where researchers can meet with "socio-informaticians" such as Arif and discuss their research and informatics needs. Many of these needs, such as data visualisation, are also relevant in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields. More broadly, SCIP provide activities and support in the following areas:

• Data management and storage planning, including support for ARC grant applications;
• Tools and services, including digitisation, archiving, and forensics; and
• Training, events and other outreach activities.

Arif also mentioned that there are different ways to partner with SCIP:

• Embedded partnerships, where the partner school or faculty contributes to the cost of SCIP socio-informaticians employed to work directly on SCIP projects in collaboration with researchers from the partner school or faculty; and
• Project-based partnerships, where SCIP will provide tailored support and solutions for existing projects in the partner school/faculty.