CHICAGO, IL — March 4, 2026. The Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA) has awarded a grant to support continued development of the ethically-licensed data science platform TMI-WEB.
A collaboration between DePaul University’s IDentity Research Lab and the Organization for Ethical Source (OES), TMI-WEB is an open source ecosystem designed for intersectional, relational, and human-centered qualitative research at scale. It offers social scientists, designers, and data scholars an ethical and open alternative to expensive, proprietary qualitative data analysis software.
The $15,000 grant from ORCA will help take TMI-WEB from its current beta to a Version 1.0 release, a milestone the research team has been working toward for over a year. The public release will feature a redesigned qualitative coding workflow, more flexible data imports, and an improved graph interface.
The TMI-WEB team will also develop Creative Commons-licensed instructional resources and offer hands-on training to students and researchers in under-resourced institutions and programs.
“With ORCA’s support, we’ll be expanding access and bringing more practitioners into the TMI-WEB ecosystem,” explained principal investigator Dr. Jess Parris Westbrook. “Not as ‘users’, but as co-designers and collaborators building the tools they actually need.”
Grounded in a feminist and justice-oriented application of data science, TMI-WEB enables a nuanced and highly relational approach to studying identity data that simply isn’t possible in closed-source QDAS platforms. It’s designed to meet the increasing need for flexible tooling that adapts to multidisciplinary research practices.
“Releasing TMI-WEB under the Hippocratic License [HL3-CORE] reflects growing support for ethical licensure in research communities, especially in social science,” observed OES Executive Director and TMI-WEB technical architect Coraline Ada Ehmke. “Ethics are literally baked into TMI-WEB’s data model, so it follows that the license should reflect that ethos.”
Source code for TMI-WEB is available at https://github.com/identity-research-lab/tmi-web .
About IDentity Research Lab
IDentity Research Lab was founded at DePaul University in 2024 by Dr. Jess Parris Westbrook. IDRL is dedicated to studying intersectional identity through transdisciplinary approaches that integrate inclusive data practices, computational social science, and critical design.
About the Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA)
The Open Research Community Accelerator nurtures cross-sector coalitions to tackle the systems-level challenges that are impeding the adoption of open science at scale. ORCA believes that a more intentional approach to science is a critical component of a more just society. Find more about ORCA at https://www.orcaopen.org/ .
About the Organization for Ethical Source
The Organization for Ethical Source (OES) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit representing a global, multidisciplinary community of technologists working to promote human and digital rights in the software commons. We invest in tools like Contributor Covenant as part of our commitment to strengthening the technology of community to bring about better futures for everyone. If you’d like to help us shape these futures, consider becoming an OES member or supporting us with a recurring donation. Learn about the Ethical Stack and more at https://ethicalsource.dev.