Towards a roadmap for collaboration in DARIAH: The JRC approach

DARIAH-EU (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) is a pan-European consortium supporting digitally enabled research across the arts and humanities, with its Working Groups (WGs) functioning as a core mechanism for community-driven activities. This paper presents a methodological approach to mapping synergies and collaboration potential among DARIAH WGs, with the aim of identifying connections that can strengthen cross-WG cooperation and inform future infrastructure strategy. The study addresses how WGs relate in terms of scope, resources, and community; what challenges they face; how a culture of collaboration can be cultivated; and how WGs can both leverage and contribute to DARIAH central services. A three-step methodology is applied, comprising the selection of WG initiatives, the identification of connections through metadata-based analysis, and the showcasing of successful collaborative use cases. Disciplines reported in the 2025 WG activity reports were normalised against the ÖFOS 2012 vocabulary and activities against the TaDiRaH taxonomy, with results rendered through interactive chord and Sankey diagrams. Analysis of 17 active WGs spanning 17 scientific areas and 7 activity types reveals Other Humanities, Computer Sciences, and the Arts as the most frequently represented disciplinary areas, while Annotating, Organizing, Disseminating, and Archiving emerge as the most widely shared digital research activities. Collaborative initiatives such as the ECHOLOT project demonstrate the strategic value of joint proposals. The paper concludes by proposing future directions for impact measurement, knowledge base integration, and funding mechanisms that prioritise cross-WG collaboration as a driver for sustainable, infrastructure-wide innovation in the European digital humanities landscape.