Services

What services does Project S provide?

Project S provides services in four key areas for subprojects in CRC 1475:

• Analysis
• Software & Hosting
• Databases
• Publications

If you want to request Project S services, please contact one of the team members either via E-Mail or in the RUB internal Element chat. You can also join our weekly office hours (Tuesdays, 10–11 AM).

Analysis

The analysis service supports the subprojects in developing and adapting computational research methods. Because requirements vary greatly depending on the research question, source material, and project context, a separate methodological roadmap is developed for each subproject, including the design of tailored solutions to address each project’s specific needs.

Yet, where methodological overlaps exist—for example in text mining or corpus linguistics—, potential synergies are identified and used to address cross-project research questions.

Methods applied include machine learning (both "classical" and recent LLM-based approaches) and natural language processing (NLP) techniques such as topic modeling, named entity recognition, text reuse detection, and clustering, complemented by tools and approaches from corpus linguistics. The service also supports work on specific challenges such as historical languages, multilingual passages, and multimodal data.

Software & Hosting

S supports researchers in using established software such as AntConc or Gephi, helping them apply existing tools effectively to their data and research questions. When no suitable off-the-shelf solution is available, S creates new software tailored to the specific needs of the project.

For a successfull examination of the subprojects' data, S develops custom scripts and specialized tools for data transformation, visualisation, and integration with methods such as text mining, corpus linguistics, text reuse detection, and multimodal analysis.

Besides analysis-focused software and scripts, Project S also offers tailored software services that help subprojects prepare and manage their corpora for computational research. These services include databases, web applications, and AI pipelines for tasks such as metadata annotation, data exploration, translation support, similarity-based search, and corpus preprocessing.

Project S also provides hosting for individual software solutions such as web applications and databases via our Hetzner server, which is available for the entire funding period. We take care of the server administration and ensure that these services remain stable, accessible, and maintained throughout the project.

Databases

Project S provides database services to support subprojects in storing, organising, and accessing their research data. These solutions can include project-internal databases for corpora, metadata, annotations, and analysis results, helping teams manage both textual and multimodal data in a structured way.

Depending on the project’s requirements, S develops and adapts database schemas and interfaces that make data easier to explore, enrich, and share within the project. In the first funding phase, for example, a PostgreSQL database was used to support text retrieval, metadata annotation, and similarity-based document search, showing how database solutions can directly facilitate research workflows.

Where useful, S also ensures that database structures can interact with other tools and services, such as web applications, AI pipelines, or TEI-based resources (such as those provided by INF).

Publications

Project S assists subprojects in preparing their own research articles when they want to incorporate computational methods into their work. This includes advising on the methodological description of digital procedures, helping to document workflows and results clearly, and supporting the interpretation and presentation of computational analyses.

Furthermore, Project S supports the publication of research data, analysis results, and methodological outputs to make them accessible for future research and reuse. Where legally and ethically possible, prepared data and quantitative results are published on platforms such as Zenodo, while developed software and scripts are released as open-source tools.

Finally, S produces publications that share project-wide findings, best-practice guidelines, and methodological insights for computer-driven research in religious studies and metaphor analysis. These outputs may take the form of methodological articles, tutorials, and practical documentation that help make computational humanities methods more accessible across the CRC and beyond.