Michigan State University announced it has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to build out its open-source Humanities Commons platform to establish a Commons that focuses on STEM education research. Established in December 2016, the Humanities Commons currently facilitates collaboration among thousands of humanities scholars and practitioners around the world through discussion forums, open access publication of scholarly works, profiles, networks and a robust search and discovery platform. It is a not-for-profit platform operating under a shared governance model. The Humanities Commons is free for anyone to join and use.
The NSF Award describes this new STEM Commons as a “Discipline-Based Education Research plus (DBER+) Commons” that will “…build consensus around and capacity for open science, the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) practices, principles, and guidelines for use in undergraduate, postbaccalaureate, graduate, and postdoctoral science education research activities.” Other goals include advancing quality control of metadata for research products, stewardship practices, interoperability, reproducibility, sustainability, equity, and democratization of access to research data.” This is a $1.2 million, three year grant starting January 1st, 2023.
