Asia Network: An API-based cyberinfrastructure for the flexible topologies of digital humanities research in Sinology

Digital humanities (DH) is a burgeoning field of research in Sinology and Asian studies more broadly, and its diversity and maturity necessitate a cyberinfrastructure fit for DH-focused Sinologists’ specific needs. “Asia Network” is our solution. It is a pioneering approach for resource dissemination and emerging data analytics (such as text mining and other fair-use, consumptive research techniques) in the humanities. It is a language-agnostic software that facilitates the secure linkage between third-party research tools to different third-party textual collections (both licensed and open-access ones) via application programming interfaces (APIs). It revolutionizes how scholars can work with textual sources by promoting a flexible, networked approach to e-infrastructure development. Crucially, Asia Network is a loosely-coupled software with flexible topologies; it can enable both federated or centralized linkages, and it can even “disappear” as long as its API standards remain in place to facilitate communications among databases and tools in the back-end. Thus, unlike large-scale infrastructural projects, Asia Network actively lowers the profile of centralized infrastructure and instead promotes existing tools and resources by enabling their interoperability. As a result, it allows scholars to fully leverage the potential of material digitization and digital research tools without re-creating silos of resources in the digital realm.