Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA)

About the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA)

The Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) is a distributed social science data infrastructure with 17 members and one observer. CESSDA is an ESFRI Landmark and became a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) in June 2017.

CESSDA’s goal is to bring together the expertise of the CESSDA Service Providers and realise an infrastructure that enables researchers to perform high quality research. It has a Main Office in Bergen and each member country has assigned a Service Provider that functions as a national social data archive and data services organisation. Via CESSDA, these Service Providers join resources and expertise and the national members discuss and create an overarching CESSDA strategy.

A key challenge is to realise the EOSC – using the FAIR principles, taking into account the distributive character of infrastructures within social sciences, and the sensitivity of many social science data – requiring safe & secure access.

At CESSDA, we also stress the importance of skills and develop a range of training activities – taking the data life cycle as a starting point. We provide tools for data producers and data users alike, establish user communities around data clusters and promote the sharing of expertise.

CESSDA & RDA

We value the opportunity to be part of a large and international data community such as that offered by RDA, where experts meet from a range of domains and countries. We take part actively in the plenary events organised by RDA as well as its interest and working groups. We work on FAIR data and are developing a social science data platform as part of the EOSC. Our visions and missions are very much aligned when it comes to addressing the grand challenges of societies via openly sharing data and focusing on data-driven research.