Because of the customizable nature of Commons profiles, they are well-suited to showcase different kinds of work, ranging from traditional academic articles to videos and podcasts
Integration with sites on the Commons means users can create content on a Commons site that will automatically populate their profile
Represent your projects & interests.
Whether you’re an independent scholar looking to increase your activity in online communities or a graduate student starting to establish a scholarly presence, it can often be overwhelming to begin building a full picture of your work online. Maybe you have a limited amount of time to create a fully customized website, or perhaps you simply are not sure how to represent your projects in an effective way.
The four main areas of the Commons—profiles, groups, CORE, and sites—allow users to create a multifaceted digital presence. Think of this as a networked approach. As soon as you create a Humanities Commons account, you will start building your profile. You can add custom text to many of the fields, or simply by engaging in activities on the Commons, your profile will be automatically updated. For example, any groups you join or CORE deposits you upload will show up on your profile. Between the information you provide and your Commons activity, anyone who visits your profile can get a better sense of who you are.
You can also use your profile to compile a digital portfolio–a curated space where you link to projects, conference presentations, and other information about you that goes beyond your Commons activity. Choose a few projects you want to showcase, link to them from the “Projects” section, and then write some contextual information so other users know more about your work.
A Commons profile featuring links to social media and projects
As you create sites, they will also automatically show on your profile, in addition to any blog posts you’ve written on those sites. This is another great way to make your work visible—writing blog posts on topics you care about can provide a wide-ranging depiction of your work beyond CORE deposits and Commons activity. Through this multifaceted approach, you can quickly and easily spread the word about your work.
And if you’re looking for a social media-like platform to develop even more of a digital presence, consider joining our Mastodon server! Scholarly conversations are highly encouraged on hcommons.social, so you’ll feel right at home posting about your projects. Or, if you’d rather just make some new virtual friends and not talk too much about work, you can do that on Mastodon too.
Relevant CORE deposits
If you’re looking for further reading on how you can build an online identity, check out these amazing resources in our CORE repository.
Sites on the Commons allow for quick setup – users or groups can easily create a blog or site that doesn’t require coding experience
Full site editing allows for easy customization, making it possible to create a clean, aesthetically pleasing design
The Commons’ high findability in Google’s indexing can make projects more locatable within search results
Share what you’re working on.
Imagine you’re:
Leading a research lab of 5 art historians who are creating a podcast on local art within your community. You host your podcast episodes on all the major streaming platforms, but you’d like to create a website where you can link to both your weekly episodes and supplementary content, such as pictures of the artwork mentioned and links to related articles.
Working on your first novel, which you started writing as part of your creative writing MFA program. You’d like to create a blog where you reflect on the process of turning a short story from your portfolio into a longer work.
Hosting a mini-conference amongst a group of music theory colleagues. You’d like to develop a website where you can post the Call For Papers and details on how to access the conference.
For all of these projects, Humanities Commons sites are an ideal place to get started. With a variety of themes available, it’s easy to find one that fits with the visual style of the project. Once you choose a theme, you can quickly add content, images, and links to customize the look and feel of the site. The creation of your site can take as much or as little time as you’d like, and part of what makes sites useful is you don’t need to do any custom coding. Using the block editor in WordPress is particularly helpful for creating a nice-looking site quickly.
Selection of current customizable themes available on the Commons
In addition to developing a website, the leaders of these projects may also want to consider how they could leverage other areas of the Commons to enhance awareness of their projects. The CORE repository’s high ranking in search engines (including automatic indexing with Google Scholar) makes it easier for a project to be discovered by a broad audience. So, in order to get even more interest around their podcast and receive a DOI for their work, the team of art historians might deposit a few episodes into CORE. The only caveat is CORE has a size limit of 100 MB, so the team may only be able to upload a few of the shorter episodes.
The CORE Repository on the Commons
Once you’ve added content to the Commons, you’re ready to share it with the world. The next step in spreading the word is to start with the tools available on the Commons. Posting on the news feedor discussion board in a Commons group is one way to find an audience who is already interested in your topic. For example, the music theory mini-conference site could be shared in any of the music history or theory groups on the Commons. Additionally, leveraging other social networks like Mastodon, Facebook, and Twitter is vital, as this will drive more traffic to your project beyond Commons users. Even just a few regularly scheduled posts with a link to your site and a short description of your posts or updates can go a long way.
Groups, like “Getting Started with MSU Commons” on the Commons
FAQs
Question
Answer
Is my project right for a Commons site?
Overall, Humanities Commons offers enough tools and features so that any project of an academic nature has a place on the Commons. However, for the security of our network, we do have to limit some customization options in WordPress. If you’re looking to create a large-scale project with extensive customization of your site, you may want to consider other options. Contact us at hello@hcommons.org to discuss this further!
Why can’t I add certain WordPress themes or plugins to my site?
For security purposes, we limit some of the theme and plugin options available to our users. If you’d like to request a plugin or an added theme, email us at hello@hcommons.org.
Can I create a custom URL for my site?
All sites in the Commons network contain the .hcommons.org domain name. We do not offer custom URLs at this time.
I’ve never used WordPress before and am not sure where to start. Any suggestions?
There are many tutorials around the web for users who are new to WordPress. Although full-site editing is relatively new, this help guide on full-site editing is a great place to get started. WordPress’s official tutorials are thorough, and there is plenty of additional support online as well.
Welcome to Commons Highlights — a new series highlighting groups, sites, and organizations that make the Commons their home. We will be speaking with users who have created vibrant and thriving communities on how they did it, and the lessons they have learned.
The Composers of Color Resource Project
What do you do with the urgent desire to make societal change? How do you capture that initial spark, and turn it into sustained momentum? As Aaron Grant, a founding member of the Composers of Color Resource Project has said, “Many want to do anti-racist pedagogy in classes, but where do you start?” In May of 2020, as worldwide protests erupted in response to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, a group of music theorists created a Slack channel that was committed to start answering these questions. The channel was created, in part, as a space to discuss ways of diversifying the music theory curriculum and developing anti-racist pedagogy. The channel immediately had a large influx of members as the music theory community reckoned with how to create and sustain badly needed DEI (diversity equity and inclusion) work within the discipline, but after a strong start the channel began to lose momentum. Among those who joined the Slack channel were the scholars who would start the Composers of Color project: Amy Fleming, Aaron Grant, Megan Long, Jan Miyake, and Sam Reenan.
Members of the Composers of Color Resource Project. From top right: Amy Fleming, Aaron Grant, Megan Long, Jan Miyake, and Sam Reenan.
As membership and discussion slowed down within Slack, Jan Miyake suggested using Zoom to have a workshop where a subset of Slack channel members analyzed music by BIPOC composers in small groups, wrote up analytical notes, and tagged their notes with search terms that they would want when looking to diversify their teaching examples. Those who were invested in making change had something to participate in, and with this first Zoom workshop the Composers of Color Resource Project was born.
Where Do You Start?
Since July, the Composers of Color Resource Project has hosted seven analysis sessions, generated 78 pages of analytical notes, explored the work of 31 BIPOC composers, analyzed at least 80 works, created at least 30 annotated scores, built a user-friendly spreadsheet cataloging these works, and presented it all within Humanities Commons. Many users, including team members themselves, have found new research topics through the spreadsheet cataloging all of the works. Users can submit new entries through a Google Form, which are then vetted and added by the project team.
Creating the Composers of Color Resource Project wasn’t easy. To engage members the team devised a deliverable-oriented workflow to crowdsource this work, allowing users to participate without feeling solely responsible for the entirety of any one piece of it. According to Grant, “It was low effort on an individual level with crowdsourcing, but created a high impact on the discipline and on theorists’ everyday lives. Finding suitable pieces and recordings for the classroom would normally take an immense amount of time.” Crowdsourcing allowed the many people who wanted to do something to accomplish much more than they would have been able to do on their own. The group has now been able to link to existing recordings, and to identify pieces that need recording through this process.
How Humanities Commons Helped the Project Grow
Team member Sam Reenan was on a Society for Music Theory committee looking at using the Commons for society business, so he was familiar with the basic functionality of the platform. As the project team looked for a place to store the ever-expanding amount of materials, it became clear to the team that Google Drive and other file sharing services would not be adequate. Humanities Commons’ group functionality, with its ability to upload files, create collaborative documents, and group website capabilities proved to be a good fit.
“The website gave our subset of people an identity, a name, and an email,” Megan Long says. “It gave the project boundaries and became more focused. [Humanities Commons] made it easier to do stuff and organize events.”
Grant, too, sees the Humanities Commons group and site as giving the group legitimacy: “That legitimacy is necessary for things to become more than ‘backyard projects.’ There have been Google spreadsheets circulated for years. But while they are useful, not everyone feels as invested in a spreadsheet. Legitimacy makes a big difference in terms of momentum.” Grant notes that earlier projects that relied on technologies like Google Sheets didn’t create a sense of personal responsibility in those who participated. He goes on to say, “Humanities Commons is much more accessible to those who are not as tech-savvy. Having it all hosted on this website and easy to navigate is so crucial. Just like using Zoom for our meetings. Everyone now knows how to use Zoom. It’s easy to lose track of the conversation on Slack, so it’s been great to use HC and Zoom in tandem.”
While the Humanities Commons group is private (Commons users must request membership), the website is open to the public. Reenan explained, “Our field is sort of odd in that there’s a lot of people teaching music theory that aren’t music theorists (e.g. performing musicians, high school teachers). The group website is a great way of targeting people who aren’t doing this all day everyday — graduate students, adjuncts, and those who teach it as part of a larger curriculum, providing them with accessible and readily-adaptable materials.”
Publicizing the Group and Gaining Momentum
The project has over 200 members on their mailing list, and 78 participating in the Commons group. The membership has drawn those early in their career as well as senior scholars. The team has used social media (primarily Facebook and Twitter), Society of Music Theory (SMT) listservs, and Zoom events to grow their network. Through word-of-mouth even non-members are using the group’s resources. One of the ways the project team has sustained their growth and expanded the available materials is through events. Zoom sessions to work collaboratively are announced through their email list, social media, and SMT listservs.
As the collection grows, more people are exposed to the project, and the team notes that there is almost always someone in their annotated score spreadsheet. The majority of discussion has been held within Zoom, email, or Slack, however they’re currently looking at utilizing the group’s forum for further discussion. Future plans include finding ways to leverage the social media aspects of the Commons, and taking advantage of the group’s event calendar to announce events.
Plans for the Future
What’s in store for the Composers of Color Resource Project? Some of the next steps planned by the team are:
Multiplying the number of resources they have available through further crowdsourcing
Mining the resources currently available for future projects
Collecting volunteered, ready-made handouts and lesson plans that educators have created for their individual classroom and sharing them on our website
Further growing membership
Creating small groups to discuss anti-racist policies in syllabi
Creating opportunities for performers to make recordings of the pieces that have yet to be recorded
In addition to further growing the current resources, there are plans to create resources to fit into other types of curricula, crowdsourcing syllabi, and continuing to develop the raw resources available into more classroom-ready materials.
“The idea that in addition to some groundwork laid in data mining a lot of these sources, there’s a lot of room for refinement of these materials,” Grant says. “For a lot of people who may not have as much pedagogical training we could streamline that process and have a repository for handouts, lesson plans, and units.”
The Composers of Color Resource Project is a great example of like-minded people finding each other and using the power of crowdsourcing to get things done. The old adage “many hands make light work” applies here. While this type of project would be a huge and heavy lift for just a few people, by spreading it across a group diverse in age, background, and training they’ve successfully launched a growing and thriving space providing materials for those both within and outside the music theory community.
Welcome to Commons Highlights — a new series highlighting groups, sites, and organizations that make the Commons their home. We will be speaking with users who have created vibrant and thriving communities on how they did it, and the lessons they have learned.
The Open Access Books Network
The Open Access Books Network (OABN) was begun by members of OAPEN, OPERAS, ScholarLed and SPARC Europe to foster discussions about OA books among researchers, publishers, librarians, funders, infrastructure providers, and other stakeholders. What started on Slack after the ELPUB 2019 conference has become a thriving Humanities Commons group of over 180 members, engaging in events, discussions, and the sharing of ideas and information.
Clockwise from top left: Lucy Barnes, Agata Morka, and Tom Mosterd.
The OABN Humanities Commons group was built by the OABN’s coordinators, Lucy Barnes, Editor and Outreach Co-Ordinator at Open Book Publishers; Tom Mosterd, Community Manager, OAPEN/DOAB; and Agata Morka, European Coordinator OA books, Open Book Publishers. The group was looking to boost engagement and open new ways for members to interact. They chose to move to the Commons because, as Lucy Barnes states, “The ethos of the Commons and the way it’s run is very much in line with our own values.” The Commons’ emphasis on privacy for user data, openness to all regardless of affiliation, and the fact that it is an explicitly academic space made it the ideal home for the group as they sought to increase discussion and boost membership. As Tom Mosterd points out, “A lot of the people on Slack were already familiar with the Commons,” so it seemed like a natural fit as they worked to grow the group and increase participation.
Using the Commons to Engage Members
In addition to providing a forum for discussion, the Commons group structure also provides an event calendar, shared files and docs, and the ability to maintain a WordPress-based group blog or website. The OABN website is used to publicize live events and uses a WordPress widget to incorporate a feed from theOpen Access Tracking Project to provide updated news and information from the wider community. By consistently updating their website, the OABN team keeps members engaged and continues to activate discussion within the community. Lucy Barnes on driving group growth: “It’s been a mix of letting it grow naturally and using events to drive traffic.” For example, the teamcelebrated Open Access Week by posting a “mini-series of blog interviews about new and interesting initiatives within the open access book ecosystem” (Mosterd, 2020).
As the team uses the blog to drive event traffic, they use the discussion forum to alert users to events and engage members in discussion. The group puts on one to two events per month and providing links to the event recordings on the Commons reaches those who could not participate live and preserves the content for future members. By creating group events using the community calendar and publicizing those events through the group blog and Twitter, they have been able to not just maintain discussion, but grow it. Allowing the group to be publicly visible encourages people to drop in to see the conversation and then join to take part in the discussion. Twitter has been vitally important in driving users to the group and events, as well as own personal networks and peers.
Finding Ways to Grow
The OABN team has done several things to grow their group and that have contributed to their success. By reaching out and engaging with other initiatives who are working on similar topics, Barnes remarked, “it’s easy to collaborate with other groups on Commons.” CORE deposits can be posted to up to five groups at a time, alerting not just your own members but other key groups to new papers, syllabi, or learning materials. As a public group, any member of Humanities Commons can join in the conversation, which can help draw in users who may just be exploring the idea of open access publishing.
Barnes, Mosterd, and Morka were also conscious of helping to “demystify” the Commons for new users by providing a clear description of the group, contact information for the administrators with specific information how to seek help, andproviding an explainer pinned to the top of the discussion forum on how to register and join the group with clear guidelines on participation. The openness has encouraged people to join and ask questions and has allowed several students to post surveys and conduct research among its members.
By using multiple forms of engagement, the OABN team has been able to gauge how the community has received different kinds of content. Twitter allows for discussion with the wider community outside of the core group membership, and the discussion forum and blog allow for focused discussion on events. Barnes has also been using the Google Analytics plugin to look at site traffic and most-visited content.
What’s Next for OABN?
Barnes says the group plans to “use [the Commons] to gather community feedback in a more structured way.” She indicated open access publishing is a diverse community and that there are a lot of policy developments under discussion. Large presses have advantages in getting their voices heard, while many smaller presses do not. The Humanities Commons group makes gathering the perspectives of smaller presses easier. While they have not used the Docs feature much yet, Barnes views it as a way “to think about different policy areas that might benefit from discussion and where people may not always agree, but where they can represent their points-of-view in a way people can look back on and refer to, and that we can perhaps present as well.”
The other key area that OABN wants to grow is to find ways to make it more useful for people new to open access publishing. The community is currently made up of mostly publishers, but seeks to bring students, researchers, librarians, and others with an interest in OA publishing on board. Barnes remarked that Humanities Commons attracts the kinds of individual researchers and students that they would like to connect to the community. Mosterd added, “I hope that people will find our network and ask their questions. That it becomes more of a place where researchers, students, or people new to the library or publishing world can find resources. There are a lot of people there who can help them.”
Welcome to week three of the Humanities Commons Group Month! We’re dedicating this time with you to explore groups features, network, and build online community. Each week features a quick challenge (only 5-10 minutes required of your time) to help you familiarize yourself with groups and develop your online presence. As you complete each challenge, share your progress with the larger HC community by tweeting your work to us at @humcommons and using our hashtag, #HCGroups. That way, we can answer questions, direct folks to your work, and keep the conversation going.
If you’ve already missed the first two weeks, never fear! All of our challenges are explained in this blog, so just look back to early blog posts to see what you missed.
Week 3 Challenge
Post a new discussion post. Let at least three people know about it.
This challenge will last from March 15th to the 21st. To complete our third challenge, first navigate to the Groups area of Humanities Commons by clicking the Groups tab. Find a group you’re already a part of or join a new one and click onto that group’s page. Once there, click on the Discussion tab of the group’s navigation bar (just below the group’s header image). After you’ve reached the Discussion page, click on the green button labeled Create New Topic and type your new post into the text box. There are many options you can choose to customize this discussion post. For example, you can select to be notified of any follow-up replies by email, or you can choose to post the same comment to multiple groups by using the checklist at the bottom of the page.
Once you’re done typing in your message and selecting from the many options, click the green button labeled Submit. Congrats! Your discussion post should now be live! Share the post with three people by copying and pasting your post’s link to social media. Please also share your new post with us on Twitter so we can share it with our followers!
Week 3 Group Admin Challenge
Show or hide a menu item for members. For example, if your group doesn’t use one of the group features, you can remove it from the menu to decrease clutter!
To complete this challenge, first go to your group’s page. Select Manage from the group’s navigation bar; then, click on the Settings button. Scroll down to see the option to hide or show menu items. Don’t forget to click Save Changes after you’re happy with your selection, or else it won’t be saved.
If you ever change your mind about whether you’d like the menu item to be visible or hidden, you can always return to this page and change it back. Read more about these new options for groups in our recent blog post.
Week 2 Solutions
Get stuck last week? Or missed the challenges announcement? Not to worry, you can still complete them this week! Here they are (you can also find them on the blog post dedicated to Week 2), with instructions.
Week 2 Challenge
Respond to a discussion post that somebody else began.
To complete this challenge, navigate to the Groups area of Humanities Commons, and either find a group you’re already a part of or join a new one. Once you’re in the group, click on the Discussion tab of the navigation bar (by default, it’s right next to Activity, the main page for most groups). Once there, respond to one of the discussion topics! Or, if there aren’t any, make a discussion topic of your own (that’s jumping ahead a bit to week 3, but you won’t lose points, promise!). Topics can be anything related to the group’s purpose: a pressing issue in a given field, a call for papers, an announcement of a major publication, etc.
Week 2 Group Admin Challenge
Change the group photo or cover image. If you like the one you already have, feel free to switch it back!
To complete this challenge, navigate to a group that you are an administrator for. Next, click Manage in the navigation bar. Once on the Manage page, you can click on Photo or Cover Image in order to change these elements of your group. Do the process again to change it back to the old Photo/Cover Image!
In March 2019, Humanities Commons will host HC Groups Month by posting various challenges and encouraging tips on our Twitter account, @humcommons. By the end of the month, participants will have a better understanding of how they can take full advantage of the many benefits that HC groups offer.
Why should you take part in HC Groups Month?
Groups are an important feature of Humanities Commons because of their incredible networking potential. By participating in HC Groups Month, you’ll not only learn how to better utilize HC groups, you’ll put your learning to work immediately. This means that your work within the challenges will work for you: you’ll grow your digital network and hopefully make vital connections with other scholars in your field. This can help you grow your digital presence and share your work with a wider audience.
While building your network on HC groups, you’ll find many other benefits:
Find support for your work. Each HC group has a “documents” feature, which allows you to share and co-edit documents. This is a great way to ask for feedback on work-in-progress. Additionally, HC users can choose to share their CORE uploads with specific groups. Once shared, you can again ask for feedback, or simply sit back and bask in the knowledge that your work will receive a larger readership than had you not shared it with a group or uploaded it to CORE.
Fruitful discussions had at conferences no longer have to end there. You can create a group for a specific conference or society, allowing you to continue conversations held at conferences and share presentations and papers. This will also allow other scholars who were unable to attend the conference to read the work presented and take part in these important discussions.
Find the right type of group for you. Each group fulfills a specific purpose for a specific group of people. For example, you might want to support a particular network that currently has very little digital presence. Or, you may want to create a group for one of the courses you’re teaching or a workshop you’re leading. You might also want to create a group for a society or organization. HC allows group creators and members a number of personalization options. As a creator, you decide how public your group will be. As a member, you are in control of how many notifications and/or emails you receive from the group.
Enjoy advantages from the listserv model. During our opening Twitter chat announcing HC Groups Month, one HC user mentioned how much she enjoyed using HC groups over listervs because of the streamlined discussions and searchability of HC groups. It can be difficult to locate past conversations hosted in an emailed listserv; however, on HC groups, all discussions are easily located and neatly archived. Similarly, all documents and CORE uploads shared with HC groups are easy to find. By shifting your conversations from a listserv to an HC group, you won’t even lose your ability to post by email: group members can conveniently post discussion topics and replies by sending an email.
Ready for HC Groups Month?
Us, too! We look forward to hosting you on Twitter as we work through our groups-based challenges. Our calendar is below:
WEEK 1 (March 1-7): Invite 3 new members to a group you’re in.
WEEK 2 (March 8-14): Respond to a discussion post that somebody else began.
WEEK 3 (March 15-21): Post a new discussion post. Let at least 3 people know about it.
WEEK 4 (March 22-28): Make a new CORE deposit that gets shared to your group(s). Let folks know, in the group discussion or via social media!
End of Month (March 29-31): Help us add to our list of best practices for generating participation in groups.
As you complete the challenges, share your progress! If you’re on Twitter, tweet with #HCGroups.
Extra! Group Admin Challenges
If you are already a group admin, or want to become one with a new group of your own, here are some extra challenges for admins!
WEEK 1 (March 1-7): Set a welcome message for your group that all new members will receive.
WEEK 2 (March 8-14): Change the group photo or cover image. If you like the one you already have, feel free to switch it back!
WEEK 3 (March 15-21): Show or hide a menu item for members. For example, if your group doesn’t use one of the group features, you can remove it from the menu to decrease clutter!
WEEK 4 (March 22-28): Advertise your group! Share it via e-mail, social media, in-person conversations, etc.
End of Month (March 29-31): Help us add to our list of best practices for generating participation in groups.
HC Groups Month begins on Friday, March 1st. Be sure to follow us on Twitter (@humcommons) so you don’t miss out on anything. Give us a shout out using our hashtag, #HCGroups, so we know you’re ready to grow your digital network using HC groups!
Once you’ve created a group on Humanities Commons, you may find yourself asking a number of questions:
What do I do next?
How do I get people do join my group?
How do groups promote exciting academic activity and collaboration?
How do I encourage members to post more?
What else can I do with my group besides sharing CFPs and CORE deposits?
To help you answer these questions and make the most of your Humanities Commons group, we’ve compiled a list of best practices for group moderators. Please be sure to first visit the collection of pages within our groups guide and FAQ. Each of these pages outlines the basic instructions and features for using our groups.
