These days UNESCO has released open science recommendations and publishing companies are signing open transformative agreements with universities in Europe and North America. Open science is a pragmatic concept that highlights the role of transparent and reproducible research practices, open dissemination of results, and new forms of collaboration, all greatly facilitated by digitization. It comprises ail scientific disciplines and aspects of scholarly practices, including basic and applied sciences, natural and social sciences and the humanities.

However, there are many definitions and ways to open knowledge. For instance, in Latin America, the free, public dissemination of research has long been understood primarily as a public good managed by the academic community. Scielo, the largest open access harvesting platform in the region, was founded in 1997, five years before the first open access declarations of Budapest, Bethesda, and Berlin. Non-commercial, open access publication is widely understood as a key engine of knowledge democratization. In addition to this, conversations on open and free technologies have been part of the regional agenda since the late 90s, when the term “technological sovereignty” was already used by activists who wanted to have more control over the software they used and avoid dependence on equipment suppliers in the Global North.

This talk will discuss some benefits, challenges, and barriers for open digital humanities relating them to technology, standards, recommendations, and multilingualism. It will also bring some Latin American initiatives to explore possible digital humanities approaches to open science.

This talk was delivered virtually on June 13, 2023, as an Institute Lecture as part of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada). The session was chaired by David Wrisley (New York U Abu Dhabi).