Perspecti: Introducing a comprehensive research and citation database for the Arts and Humanities

This presentation introduces Perspecti, a new research and citation database designed specifically for the Arts and Humanities. Perspecti addresses important limitations of traditional scholarly data sources, which often rely on journal-centric approaches and predominantly English-language content. By broadening coverage across publication types, languages, and scholarly traditions, and by extracting citation information directly from the original versions of record - including the footnotes - Perspecti aims to provide a more comprehensive and representative view of Arts and Humanities research. The presentation will discuss the key design principles underlying the development of Perspecti and reflect on the methodological choices made to capture the diversity of scholarly communication in the field. We will present initial findings from the database and share insights gained through exploratory analyses of its content. Particular attention will be given to the diversity of publication formats, linguistic coverage, citation practices, the age of cited and citing literature, and the main thematic areas represented within the dataset. These analyses offer new perspectives on the characteristics of Arts and Humanities scholarship and highlight patterns that are often overlooked in conventional bibliometric databases. Finally, we will focus on findings of particular relevance to the Nordic research community and explore how Perspecti can support research monitoring, scholarly communication studies, and evidence-based policymaking in the Arts and Humanities.