All about the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI)
Part 3: What is the ZBW’s contribution to KonsortSWD?
What is KonsortSWD?
KonsortSWD look a bit like RatSWD (German Data Forum) and that’s where it originates. KonsortSWD is the consortium for the social, behavourial, educational, and economic sciences and one of 30 NFDI consortia. It is to be completed by 2025.
What are the goals of KonsortSWD?
KonsortSWD aims to support the needs of its members, who increasingly collaborate in multi- and interdisciplinary projects, in their research data management. The problem with the various types of data in use is that they are usually sensitive for legal or ethical reasons and often have been created for non-scientific purposes.
The consortium partners contribute many years of experience in the operation of jointly managed research data infrastructures to NFDI.
KonsortSWD wants to support researchers and research data centres in the administration and reuse of sensitive data, both in the technical and the content-related sense and always in compliance with the FAIR principles. This means firstly a sustainable research data management across the life cycle of research data, but above all it means that the availability of data is guaranteed while taking ethical and legal aspects into account.
Which services does KonsortSWD offer?
KonsortSWD provides services related to research data in the social, behavourial, educational, and economic sciences.
- Project grants in research data management: researchers receives support in preparing relevant new data collections and making them available for secondary use. More.
- Creating persistent identifiers for variables, i.e. making content within datasets referenceable and findable. More.
- Providing best practices for the visibility of research data in meta-search engines such as Google & co. More.
- Open APIs for standardised data access, i.e. reducing obstacles to data use and data provision through standardised interfaces. More.
- Automatic coding of open responses in surveys with CODI. More.
- Online platform for teaching and information material at research data centres (FDZ). More.
- Tools, templates, and guidelines on key ethical, legal, and practical challenges to RDM of qualitative data. More.
- Support for archiving and sharing of qualitative data in social research. More.
- And much more.
What is the ZBW’s contribution to KonsortSWD?
The ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics improves the findability of KonsortSWD data in general data search engines. The ZBW also develops solutions for the standardised data exchange between research data centres with the goal of promoting the homogeneity and sustainability of the technical implementations.
Partners of the ZBW in KonsortSWD
- DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education
- DZHW – German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies
- GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
- LIfBi – Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories
- SOEP at DIW Berlin – Socio-Economic Panel at German Institute for Economic Research
- University of Bremen – RCD Qualiservice
- University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) – Chair of Public Policy and State Policy
- WZB – Berlin Social Science Center
- ZPID – Leibniz Institute for Psychology