Anonymization and Privacy Management in Social Science Data Archives: The Slovenian Case

The preservation and sharing of social science data is well established, with domain-specific data archives operating and evolving since the 1970s. Today, 23 Member States and 11 partners are associated with the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA). Slovenia has been a member of CESSDA since 1997, with the Social Science Data Archives at the University of Ljubljana (ADP) serving as the service provider. ADP provides selection and permanent curation of quality data from the Slovenian research landscape and provides access to these data for target communities.

Research involving sensitive data, such as special categories of personal data, is particularly challenging and labour-intensive. During the acquisition process, ADP determines whether the research meets the requirements of the GDPR and national legislation and assesses the potential usability of the data. In doing so, it follows the principle: “open as much as possible, closed as much as necessary.”

This presentation describes the process by which ADP takes over material from researchers, verifies compliance with legal requirements, assesses the risk of disclosure of research participants, and applies safeguards such as anonymisation and restricted access to data (e.g. safe room environment). During this process, ADP assesses the quality of the material received, considering methodology, sampling, integrity of the material, and its potential for reuse by different audiences. Dilemmas and solutions are illustrated by two international research projects involving sensitive personal data.

The social science data archives associated with CESSDA play an important role in implementing the principles of Open Science, particularly the FAIR principles. Their special value for the social sciences lies in ensuring the continuous development of infrastructure and services tailored to target users, and in building high-quality datasets for future research.