Thinking Outside the Black Box: Insights from a Digital Exhibition in the Humanities

TL;DR

This paper discusses the importance of transparency and documentation in humanities research, exemplified by creating a digital twin of an exhibition to enhance reproducibility and understanding.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed documentation approach for humanities research using a digital twin, emphasizing transparency to improve reproducibility and reliability.

Findings

Enhanced transparency aids in understanding research processes.

Documentation of digital twins supports reproducibility in humanities.

Explicit recording of study design improves research reliability.

Abstract

One of the main goals of Open Science is to make research more reproducible. There is no consensus, however, on what exactly "reproducibility" is, as opposed for example to "replicability", and how it applies to different research fields. After a short review of the literature on reproducibility/replicability with a focus on the humanities, we describe how the creation of the digital twin of the temporary exhibition "The Other Renaissance" has been documented throughout, with different methods, but with constant attention to research transparency, openness and accountability. A careful documentation of the study design, data collection and analysis techniques helps reflect and make all possible influencing factors explicit, and is a fundamental tool for reliability and rigour and for opening the "black box" of research.