Conducting an in-depth environmental scan and literature review early in the planning process is a critical step to see if there are existing projects that are similar to your own or that may accomplish similar goals to your potential project. Sometimes, the planning process stops after the scan because you find that someone has already done it! Typically, a scan is useful in articulating and justifying the "need" for your research OR to justify your choice of one technology in lieu of others. Performing an environmental scan early and reviewing and revising it periodically will go a long way to help you prove that your project fills a current need for an actual audience.
Successful project proposals demonstrate knowledge of the ecosystem of existing projects in your field, and the field's response to those projects. Scans often help organizations identify potential collaborators, national intitiatives, publications, articles, or professional organizations, which in turn can demonstraate a wider exigency for your project. Following a preliminary scan, you should be able to explain why your project is important to the field, what it provides that does not currently exist, and how your project can serve as a leader or example to other organizations in such a way that they can put your findings to new issue.
Below are suggestions for finding similar projects and initiatives in and outside of your field:
Federal grant agencies maintain repositories with white papers from previously funded grant projects:
- Institute of Museum and Library Services
- National Endowment for the Humanities Funded Projects Query Form
- National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Recent Grants
- National Science Foundation
- National Institutes of Health
Search and browse through literature in the field and resources for digital tools and innovations. Some examples of places to look include:
- IMLS UpNext https://www.imls.gov/news-events/upnext-blog
- D-Lib Magazine http://www.dlib.org/
- The Signal: Digital Preservation http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/
- Curator Journal http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)2151-6952
- American Archivist http://www2.archivists.org/american-archivist#.V1kWCZMrLGI
- Informal Science http://www.informalscience.org/
- Center for the Future of Museums http://www.aam-us.org/resources/center-for-the-future-of-museums
- OCLC blogs http://www.oclc.org/blog/main/
- DiRT registry of digital humanities tools http://dirtdirectory.org/
- Digital Humanities Now http://digitalhumanitiesnow.org/
- SSRC's Items http://items.ssrc.org/
- Ant, Spider, Bee http://www.antspiderbee.net/
- PLOS http://blogs.plos.org/ & http://blogs.plos.org/collections/
- The Winnower https://thewinnower.com/topics
- HubZero https://hubzero.org/groups/browse
- AAAS Trellis https://www.trelliscience.com/#/site-home
- Search preprint repositories, academic repositories, and data warehouses for similar datasets
- Check conference programs and gray literature from your field and related materials.
- Discuss your project idea with your colleagues inside and outside of your own department at your institution, at conferences, and even with peers in different fields.
The key to the environmental scan is to see what a wider community is already up to. How does your project fit into the ongoing work of others in your field? What about in a related field that addresses a similar question from another perspective? Is someone already working on a similar question?
-
Brainstorm where you might go to look for digital projects in your field that use emerging or new forms of technology. Try to list 3 places you might look to see how others in your field are adapting their methods to use new digital tools.
-
What technologies/methods do most people use in your field, if any, for capturing, storing, exploring/analyzing, or displaying their data? Why do they tend to use it? Is there a reason why you want to use the same technologies as your colleagues? What are the benefits of doing things differently?
-
Does your project fill a need or stake new methodological ground? How do you know?
-
If there aren't any technologies that do exactly what you were hoping for, has anyone else run into this problem? How did they solve it? Will you need to create a new tools or make significant changes to an existing one to accomplish your goal?
-
Once you have gathered information about what is "out there," what are the limits of what you are willing to change about your own project in response? How will you know if you have stretched beyond the core objectives of your own research project?