Huma-Num

What Huma-Num does

Huma-Num is a French Very Large Research Infrastructure (IR* / TGIR, formal designation UAR 3598) that provides digital research infrastructure for the humanities and social sciences. Its mission, funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MESR/MESRI) and operated under the tutelage of CNRS with Aix-Marseille Université and Campus Condorcet, is to support the digital transition of French SSH research across the full data lifecycle: organisation, collection, processing, preservation, publication and reuse.

The infrastructure's core products are NAKALA, an interoperable repository for depositing and preserving text, audio, video and image data with DOI persistent identifiers, qualified Dublin Core metadata and OAI-PMH interoperability; and ISIDORE, a multilingual discovery platform indexing publications, data and researcher profiles in up to nine languages. Supporting services include ShareDocs (secure web file manager), Huma-Num Box (distributed storage across ~10 nodes, ~500 TB capacity), ~100 TB of NAS for hot data, web hosting for ~800 sites, ~300 virtual machines and a self-hosted GitLab. Third-party tools operated on Huma-Num infrastructure include TXM (text corpus analysis), OpenTheso (multilingual thesaurus management), Stylo (scientific writing) and Heurist (database publishing). The stack is built on Linked Open Data standards (RDF, SPARQL, SKOS, OWL) with multi-protocol access (REST, GraphQL, SPARQL, OAI-PMH, IIIF) and centralised authentication through HumanID.

The business model is non-commercial: Huma-Num is funded by MESR as a public research infrastructure, all services are provided free of charge to French and international SSH researchers, and long-term preservation is contracted to CINES under a four-year agreement. Go-to-market is community-led via a network of funded consortia, a relay-correspondent network in the Maisons des Sciences de l'Homme across France, training programmes, and active French coordination of European infrastructures DARIAH and CLARIN, with participation in OPERAS, TRIPLE, SSHOC and EOSC-PILLAR. Huma-Num is led by Director Olivier Baude (Directeur de l'IR* Huma-Num et de l'UAR 3598), under the broader publication governance of the CNRS Président-directeur général.

Name

Huma-Num

Legal name

IR* Huma-Num – UAR 3598

Website

https://huma-num.fr

Company type

Private

Founded year

2013

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Huma-Num is a French Very Large Research Infrastructure (IR*/TGIR, UAR 3598) under CNRS that provides free digital repository, discovery and preservation services (NAKALA, ISIDORE, Huma-Num Box, ShareDocs) for humanities and social sciences researchers, funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Digital Humanities Research Infrastructure

NAICS

Libraries and Archives (51921), Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services (519290), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

Education Data Warehousing, ETL/ELT & Master Data Management (MDM) (EDADAIAB)

akta.pro secondary industries

Digital Asset Management (DAM) for Media/Creative (MPAHAGAB), Content Retrieval, Distribution & Reuse Workflows (Interoperability/APIs) (MPAHAGAK)

Keywords

• Digital research infrastructure
• Research data repository
• Digital humanities services
• Linked open data
• Scholarly data preservation

Headquarters

HQ city

Paris, France

HQ country

France

HQ region

Europe

Offices3 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations, Others

Revenue model

1. Government Research Funding: Huma-Num is funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MESR/MESRI) for its mission. Services including NAKALA repository usage (depositing and viewing files) are provided free of charge to users.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Huma-Num provides a national digital research infrastructure for humanities and social sciences, centered on NAKALA (an interoperable repository for depositing, preserving, and sharing research data with DOI identifiers) and ISIDORE (a multilingual search and discovery platform for SSH publications and datasets). Supporting services include distributed storage (Huma-Num Box, NAS), secure file management (ShareDocs), web hosting, virtual machines, and hosted third-party research tools (TXM, Stylo, OpenTheso, Heurist), all built on Semantic Web technologies and provided free of charge to the research community.

Product overview

Huma-Num is a French Very Large Research Infrastructure (IR*) for digital humanities and social sciences, providing an ecosystem of interconnected services for the research data lifecycle. The core offerings include NAKALA (an interoperable data repository for deposit, preservation, and sharing with persistent DOI identifiers) and ISIDORE (a multilingual discovery platform aggregating and indexing SSH publications and datasets). Supporting services include ShareDocs and Huma-Num Box (storage solutions for hot and cold data respectively), web hosting and virtual machines for research applications, and collaborative tools (GitLab, Kanboard, Mattermost). Third-party tools hosted on the infrastructure include TXM (text corpus analysis), Heurist (database management), OpenTheso (thesaurus management), and Stylo (scientific text editor). The platform emphasizes Linked Open Data principles using RDF, SPARQL, SKOS, and OWL technologies, with long-term preservation supported through CINES partnership.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• NAKALA: Interoperable and secure repository service for depositing all types of research data (text files, audio, video, images) to share them with persistent identifiers and long-term preservation.
• ISIDORE
• Huma-Num Box
• ShareDocs
• Huma-Num Lab
• HumanID

Products and services

• NAKALA Interoperable and secure repository service for depositing, preserving, and sharing research data in humanities and social sciences. Provides persistent identifiers (DOI), permanent data access, metadata standardization via qualified Dublin-Core, and long-term preservation through CINES partnership.
• ISIDORE

Quantifiable outcome

• 700,000+ data items preserved and accessible
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers2 records

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration6 records

AI capability6 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

22 partnerships are on record, tiered core, major and minor.

• CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCNRS is the primary parent organization of Huma-Num. Huma-Num is an UAR 3598 under CNRS tutelage. CNRS provides institutional backing, infrastructure hosting (at FMSH), and hosts the website. The director of publication is the CNRS President-Director General.
• Aix-Marseille University (AMU)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerAix-Marseille University is a founding tutelle of Huma-Num (UAR 3598), alongside CNRS and Campus Condorcet.
• Campus CondorcetcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCampus Condorcet is a founding tutelle of Huma-Num and hosts the main Aubervilliers location of the infrastructure.
• CINES (Centre Informatique National de l'Enseignement Supérieur)coreTechnology or IntegrationPartnership for long-term digital preservation. CINES provides infrastructure and expertise for archiving data with scientific value. Relations governed by 4-year agreement. CINES performs format validation, archival monitoring, and long-term preservation with remote data replication.
• CC IN2P3 (Centre de Calcul de l'IN2P3-CNRS)coreTechnology or IntegrationMajor national computing center created for particle physics data management. Hosts Huma-Num infrastructure in Lyon data center built for physicists, with hardware-level security (redundant power, networking, cooling).
• DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerHuma-Num coordinates French participation in DARIAH ERIC. Part of DARIAH Coordination Office is based in Paris at Huma-Num. France is a founding member. Huma-Num is national coordinating institution for DARIAH-FR network.
• CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerHuma-Num coordinates French participation in CLARIN ERIC. France is currently an observer member. CLARIN provides infrastructure for language data and tools for SSH research.
• OPERAS (Open Scholarly Communication in Europe)majorStrategic or Co-development PartnerHuma-Num participates in creation of OPERAS European Research Infrastructure for open scholarly communication, led by French OpenEdition, grouping 35 organizations from 12 European countries.
• OpenEditionmajorStrategic or Co-development PartnerStrategic collaboration on OPERAS infrastructure and open access scholarly communication in SSH. OpenEdition leads OPERAS development.
• MSH (Maison des Sciences de l'Homme) NetworkmajorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorNetwork of correspondents across MSH institutions in France relays information about Huma-Num services and tools to local research communities. Key distribution channel for reaching SSH researchers nationwide.
• TRIPLE (European Discovery Platform)majorTechnology or IntegrationProject led by Huma-Num developing European platform for discovery of data, research projects and researcher profiles in 9 languages. Includes crowdfunding, recommendation system, and annotation tools.
• SSHOC (Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud)majorStrategic or Co-development PartnerEuropean project bringing SSH actors to EOSC construction. Creates SSH Open Marketplace for discovery of tools and services. Huma-Num contributes to FAIR data principles implementation.
• CO.SHS (Canadian Open Cyberinfrastructure for Humanities and Social Sciences)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerHuma-Num is partner providing assessment and tools for Canadian SSH cyberinfrastructure initiative. Collaboration on discovery, seminars and research programs.
• Chaire de Recherche du Canada sur les Écritures NumériquesminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerDevelops Stylo scientific text editor with support from Université de Montréal, Érudit, CRIHN and Huma-Num under CRIHN-HN agreement.
• EOSC-PILLARminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerProject bringing together national infrastructure representatives from 5 EU member states. Huma-Num involved through expertise in SSH research data management.
• Recherche Data GouvmajorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorNational research data infrastructure partner for dissemination of metadata and coordination on data management practices.
• BNF (Bibliothèque nationale de France)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartnership for coordination on digital heritage and research data preservation.
• RNMSH (Réseau National des Maisons des Sciences de l'Homme)majorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorNational network partner for research infrastructure coordination and relay services.
• CRIHN (Centre de Recherche Interuniversitaire sur les Humanités Numériques)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartnership under CRIHN-HN agreement for development of Stylo editor and digital writing tools.
• Labex Les Passés dans le PrésentminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartnership with excellence research laboratory for historical studies.
• Consortium MASA (Mémoire des Archéologues et des Sites Archéologiques)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerHuma-Num consortium supporting OpenTheso development and archaeological data management.
• IHRIM (UMR) / ENS de LyonminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerCoordination of TXM text corpus analysis software project, partnership for support and training of TXM portals.

Scale indicators9 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Broad incumbents

• Europeana: European digital cultural heritage platform aggregating millions of items from EU institutions. Overlaps with ISIDORE in cross-border multilingual discovery of cultural and scholarly content.
• OpenAIRE: Pan-European open science infrastructure supporting EOSC with discovery, monitoring, and data services. Overlaps with ISIDORE/Nakala in research data discovery and FAIR data support across all disciplines.

Direct peers

• Zenodo: CERN-hosted open research data repository with DOI assignment and multi-discipline scope. Directly comparable to NAKALA as an interoperable repository for research datasets, though broader in disciplinary coverage.
• OPERAS: European Research Infrastructure for open scholarly communication in SSH, led by OpenEdition. Huma-Num is a founding participant; comparable as a peer European SSH infrastructure organization.
• Dataverse: Open-source research data repository software originating from Harvard, widely deployed by institutions. Comparable to NAKALA as a long-tail institutional repository platform for research data with DOI minting.
• Dryad: Curation-backed research data publishing platform with DOI assignment. Comparable to NAKALA as a domain-agnostic trusted repository for research datasets, though commercial-led.
• OpenEdition: French-led infrastructure for open scholarly publishing in SSH. Huma-Num is a strategic partner through OPERAS, and both serve overlapping French/European SSH communities with publishing and discovery services.
• CLARIN: European Research Infrastructure Consortium for language resources and tools. Huma-Num coordinates French participation in CLARIN, and both provide shared digital infrastructure for SSH research communities.
• DARIAH: European Research Infrastructure Consortium for Digital Arts and Humanities. Huma-Num coordinates the French national node (DARIAH-FR), making them directly comparable as SSH research data and tool infrastructure providers.

Others

• CINES: French national computing center for higher education, partner of Huma-Num for long-term digital preservation. Comparable as an enabler/infrastructure provider rather than direct competitor.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubecanal-u.tv/chaines/huma-num
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/tgir-huma-num

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Huma-Num