How They Connect

The European research infrastructure ecosystem for the humanities

The Ecosystem at a Glance

European research infrastructure for the humanities is not a collection of isolated platforms. Huma-Num, DARIAH, CLARIN, and EOSC are deeply interconnected — institutionally, technically, and politically.

flowchart LR
    EC["🇪🇺 European Commission\nHorizon Europe"]
    ESFRI["ESFRI Roadmap"]
    EOSC["EOSC<br/>European Open\nScience Cloud"]
    DARIAH["DARIAH-EU<br/>Arts & Humanities"]
    CLARIN["CLARIN ERIC<br/>Language"]
    CESSDA["CESSDA ERIC<br/>Social Science Data"]
    MARKET["SSH Open<br/>Marketplace"]
    HN["Huma-Num 🇫🇷<br/>(TGIR · CNRS)"]
    DARIAH_FR["DARIAH-FR"]
    CLARIN_FR["CLARIN-FR"]
    PROGEDO["PROGEDO / CDSP 🇫🇷"]
    NAKALA["NAKALA"]
    ISIDORE["Isidore"]
    UPPA["UPPA · UNITA<br/>doctoral researchers"]

    EC --> ESFRI
    EC --> EOSC
    ESFRI --> DARIAH
    ESFRI --> CLARIN
    ESFRI --> CESSDA
    DARIAH <--> EOSC
    CLARIN <--> EOSC
    CESSDA <--> EOSC
    CESSDA --> MARKET
    DARIAH --> MARKET
    CLARIN --> MARKET
    HN --> DARIAH_FR --> DARIAH
    HN --> CLARIN_FR --> CLARIN
    PROGEDO --> CESSDA
    HN --> NAKALA --> EOSC
    HN --> ISIDORE
    UPPA --> HN
    UPPA --> DARIAH
    UPPA -.-> CESSDA

Huma-Num as a National Hub

Huma-Num sits at the intersection of French national infrastructure and European distributed networks:

  • It is France’s national DARIAH node (DARIAH-FR) and hosts the DARIAH-ERIC secretariat
  • It coordinates CLARIN-FR for spoken language and text corpora
  • Its services (NAKALA, Isidore) are connected to EOSC and feed into European discovery layers
  • It participates in EOSC governance through CNRS and French open science policy

For a French researcher, Huma-Num is the practical starting point for accessing the full European infrastructure.

For social science data specifically, the French entry point to CESSDA is PROGEDO (coordinated with the CDSP at Sciences Po / CNRS), which operates independently from Huma-Num but in close alignment with it.

For a French researcher, Huma-Num is the practical starting point for most of the European infrastructure — with PROGEDO as the complementary gateway for social science datasets.

## Three ERICs, One SSH Ecosystem

Dimension DARIAH-EU CLARIN ERIC CESSDA ERIC
Disciplinary focus Arts & humanities broadly Language resources & NLP Social science data archives
Typical data Digital editions, image corpora, cultural datasets Annotated corpora, lexicons, spoken language Surveys, censuses, electoral studies, panels
Key service DARIAH Campus, working groups VLO, Switchboard, WebLicht Data Catalogue, DMEG
French entry point Huma-Num (DARIAH-FR) Huma-Num (CLARIN-FR / CORLI) PROGEDO / CDSP
EOSC membership Yes Yes Yes
SSH Marketplace Co-developer Co-developer Co-developer

For many research projects — especially in history, sociology, or interdisciplinary SSH work — more than one of these infrastructures will be relevant simultaneously.

EOSC as the Overarching Layer

EOSC does not replace Huma-Num, DARIAH, CLARIN, or CESSDA — it federates them. The relationship is:

  • Each infrastructure maintains its own governance, community, and brand identity
  • They contribute services, data, and tools that become discoverable through EOSC
  • EOSC provides cross-disciplinary findability and policy alignment (FAIR, open licences, PIDs)
  • Horizon Europe funding increasingly requires EOSC-compatible outputs — making awareness of this ecosystem practically important for grant applications

The SSH Open Marketplace: A Concrete Shared Layer

The SSH Open Marketplace is the most tangible expression of DARIAH–CLARIN–CESSDA collaboration, co-developed by the three ERICs and integrated into EOSC as the SSH discovery portal:

What you can find Examples
Tools & services Annotation tools, text editors, OCR, corpus builders
Training materials Tutorials, course modules, summer school slides
Datasets Corpora, digitised collections, encoded archives
Workflows Step-by-step research method documentation

Summary Table

Infrastructure Type Geographic scope Focus French entry point
Huma-Num TGIR (national) France DH broadly: data lifecycle, consortiums, services — (is the entry point)
DARIAH-EU ERIC 22 member states Arts & humanities: methods, training, advocacy Huma-Num (DARIAH-FR)
CLARIN ERIC ERIC 22 member states Language resources & NLP Huma-Num (CLARIN-FR)
CESSDA ERIC ERIC 23 member states Social science data archives PROGEDO / CDSP
EOSC EC initiative European Union All disciplines: open data, FAIR, interoperability Huma-Num / CNRS

What Does This Mean For Your Research?

As a doctoral student at UPPA or within UNITA, you are embedded in all these layers:

  1. Use Huma-Num as your national gateway — tools, data deposit, consortiums
  2. Through Huma-Num, you are connected to DARIAH-EU and its working groups and training
  3. For text-based or corpus-based research, CLARIN tools are directly accessible
  4. For quantitative or survey-based social science research, explore CESSDA via PROGEDO
  5. Your data deposited via NAKALA becomes part of the EOSC federated ecosystem
  6. Writing a DMP or applying for a grant? Knowing these infrastructures is expected