Collection and Operation Policy

1. Introduction

The CESSDA Knowledge Platform is a central point of access for the body of knowledge created by CESSDA Service Providers as well as for other resources relevant to the work of social science data archives. This policy is intended to serve as a guide to the development, management and care of the collection to achieve the overall mission of the Knowledge Platform. It defines mission, scope, selection criteria and stakeholders’ roles.

2. Mission

Over the years, CESSDA partners have created a significant body of knowledge on a broad range of topics. The Knowledge Platform serves the systematic collection, registration, description of, and long-term access to different resources produced by CESSDA organisations or for CESSDA organisations. Thereby it aims to foster knowledge exchange and skills transfer in the European Social Science Data Archiving landscape. To this end, resources should be freely accessible to everyone with as little restrictions from copyright or other mechanisms of control as possible.

3. Scope

The Knowledge Platform aims to become a collection of resources in a defined field of knowledge. As far as is reasonably possible, it strives to be an exhaustive collection of digital resources as well as an extensive collection of records about relevant resources published elsewhere.

The Knowledge Platform collects digital resources created in the context of CESSDA, but also publishes metadata records about resources relevant to the work of social science data archives that are available elsewhere online or in print.

3.1 Topics

The Knowledge Platform collects resources describing or covering different areas of work in social science data service, such as

3.2 Resource types

The Knowledge Platform collects (information on) all types of resources, including but not limited to

The Knowledge Platform mostly keeps a current focus, but will also seek to ingest resources retrospectively. This includes documentation of past CESSDA Expert Seminars and other CESSDA events or projects such as CESSDA PPP.

The Knowledge Platform acquires resources in the national languages of the CESSDA partners, however, a minimum of metadata should be provided in English for all resources included in the collection.

4. Responsibility

The Knowledge Platform takes responsibility for the long-term access to the resources in the collection. It will undertake measures to ensure that the bitstream of the resources is preserved. For unique, persistent identification digital resources published in the Knowledge Platform will receive a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), registered through da|ra - Registration agency for social and economic data.

5. Selection criteria

  1. Scope: Resources should fall into to the scope as defined in this document.
  2. Content: Resources should be relevant to other CESSDA organisations, it should bring new (added) value. Duplication of documents with the same or very similar content should be avoided, exceptions: resource is offered in a different language.
  3. Language: Resources can be in any language used by CESSDA organisations, but a minimum of descriptive metadata should be provided in English.
  4. Copyright: Resources should preferably use an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons; see Licensing and Copyright Guide).
  5. Duplication: If a resource has been already published elsewhere and received a Persistent Identifier, the Knowledge Platform collects and publishes only the metadata and does not register a DOI.

Selection criteria are to be used by depositors and curators, who review and publish resources.

6. Stakeholders

The Knowledge Platform distinguishes several groups of stakeholders directly interacting with the platform:

6.1 Users

The platform and the resources indexed and offered for download in it are free and open to use by everyone in accordance with the licensing conditions given for a resource. Knowledge Platform resources used in (research) publications must be cited accurately and in sufficient detail.

In particular, the collection is built and resources offered as a service for users belonging to the following groups:

The Knowledge Platform distinguishes Anonymous and Registered Users.

6.2 Depositors

Depositors submit resources (digital documents or metadata records) to the platform. They come from CESSDA Main Office, CESSDA Service Providers (SP), and CESSDA Observers or aspiring Service Providers. It is their responsibility to

To support the deposit process, it is recommended that CESSDA SPs assign a person as liaison responsible for depositing resources to the Knowledge Platform.

6.3 Curators

Curators are responsible for reviewing submitted resources, checking and editing metadata, and accepting or rejecting resources for publication in the Knowledge Platform. They come from CESSDA Main Office and CESSDA Service Providers.

Curators follow the selection criteria to reduce personal bias in their selection decisions and to ensure continuity and consistency in selection and review.

Curators are selected by CESSDA Main Office / Director / General Assembly for the mandate of two years. They can be re-elected.

The number of curators and their mandate is determined by CESSDA Main Office.

6.4 Administrators

Administrators are responsible for user management and for managing technical aspects of the platform and content organisation. It is their task to grant certain rights based on the role an individual performs for the platform (e.g. the right to upload resources for the role of “depositor”). They create the structure for the organisation of content by creating so-called collections into which resources can be included. They are responsible for registering DOIs and actually publishing resources after they were reviewed by a curator.

Administrators are appointed by CESSDA Main Office.

6.5 Knowledge Platform Editorial Committee

The role of the Editorial Committee is to vouchsafe the long-term development and management of the platform, and act as an instance of quality assurance. It consists of Knowledge Platform administrators, curators, and liaisons.

If no other agreements are made, members of the Editorial committee are appointed for a period of 2 years.

7. DOI registration

CESSDA ERIC is registered as a Publication Agent with da|ra, the registration agency for social science and economic data. DOIs registered by CESSDA ERIC are structured in the following manner:

The archives are coded as follows:

Organisation name DOI
More than one CESSDA organisation (member or partner) 10.18448/16.xxxx
CESSDA - Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives 10.18448/16.xxxx
Other organisation 10.18448/17.xxxx
ADP - Slovenian Social Science Data Archives 10.18448/1.xxxx
AuSSDA - The Austrian Social Science Data Archive 10.18448/2.xxxx
CSDA - Czech Social Science Data Archive 10.18448/3.xxxx
DANS - Data Archiving and Networked Services 10.18448/4.xxxx
DDA - Danish Data Archive 10.18448/5.xxxx
ESTA - Estonian Social Science Data Archive 10.18448/6.xxxx
FORS - Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences 10.18448/7.xxxx
FSD - Finnish Social Science Data Archive 10.18448/8.xxxx
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences 10.18448/9.xxxx
ISSDA - Irish Social Science Data Archive 10.18448/10.xxxx
LiDA - Lithuanian Data Archive for Humanities and Social Sciences 10.18448/11.xxxx
LISER - Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research 10.18448/12.xxxx
NSD - Norwegian Centre for Research Data 10.18448/13.xxxx
PROGEDO Research Infrastructure (France) 10.18448/14.xxxx
RODA - Romanian Social Data Archive 10.18448/15.xxxx
SASD - Slovak Archive of Social Data 10.18448/18.xxxx
SND - Swedish National Data Service 10.18448/19.xxxx
So.Da.Net - Greek research infrastructure for the social sciences 10.18448/20.xxxx
SOHDA - Belgian Social Sciences and Humanities Data Archive 10.18448/21.xxxx
TÁRKI - The Tárki Data Archive (Hungary) 10.18448/22.xxxx
UK Data Service 10.18448/23.xxxx
UniData - Bicocca Data Archive (Italy) 10.18448/24.xxxx

8. Revision of the document/policy

The policy is to be reviewed and updated according to the development and needs. It was last revised on September 13, 2017.