Collaborative research practices are a highly interesting domain for CSCW. So far, CSCW has mainly focused on computation- and/or data-intensive research endeavors. Here, resources are typically pooled via common e-infrastructures for data access and processing, a set-up requiring additional layers of coordination. Such a focus, however, largely foregrounds the sciences and other fields that rely on highly structured (or structure-able) data and the routinized processes of analysis.

In contrast, in this one-day workshop we discuss the conditions and challenges characteristic of research collaboration in the qualitative social sciences and humanities (SSH). In particular, we examine the sociotechnical infrastructures that enable and support research practices which—in comparison with the collaborative paradigm of natural science—tend to be less structured, compartmentalized, and routinized, but more fluid, flexible, and open-ended. The workshop seeks to collect empirical insights and design experiences, preparing the grounds for a comprehensive understanding of the role of e-infrastructures for collaborative research practices in SSH.

We invite 2-4 page contributions from practitioners and researchers in ACM Extended Abstracts format. Submissions should be e-mailed to the organizers by December 12, 2016.

We are particularly interested in contributions that draw out the core characteristics, challenges, and trends faced by groups of researchers in the SSH. Key topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Reflections and meta-perspectives on collaboration in the SSH.
• Empirical studies of collaborative research practices in the SSH, possibly taking on one or more of the following questions:
• What are the infrastructures/resources that social scientists and humanists draw on? How do they do so? And, where do resources come from?
• What has been the trajectory of change relative to digitization of resources, tools, and infrastructures?Implications of digital methodologies for training and interdisciplinarity in the SSH.
• Empirical studies of the invisible work to make collaborative research in the SSH work.
• Studies of the (participatory) design, use, education, and appropriation of new digital tools, platforms, infrastructures for collaboration in the SSH.