CESSDA – Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives
CESSDA (Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives) is a European research infrastructure consortium (ERIC) with some 30 European data archives that work together to improve access to social science research data. As an ERIC, CESSDA is a legal entity in the EU. SND has been appointed by the Swedish Research Council to represent Sweden in this collaboration.
What is CESSDA?
The mission of CESSDA is to provide a full-scale, sustainable research infrastructure that enables the research community to conduct high-quality research in the social sciences, regardless of where the researchers or data are located. Their purpose is to promote social science research results and support national and international research and collaboration. CESSDA is part of the creation of EOSC (the European Open Science Cloud), and supports the implementation of the FAIR principles. The CESSDA strategy 2023–2027 outlines three themes: Data – Enhancing Metadata and Data Interoperability, People – Fostering Connections, and Landscape – Shaping the European Research Landscape. These are supported by CESSDA’s five core values: Trust, Training, Widening & Outreach, Technology, and Tools & Services.
CESSDA is currently composed of 23 European member countries and 12 Partners. It is owned and funded by the members, and each member state appoints their own Service Provider (SP).
The role of SND in CESSDA
The Swedish Research Council has appointed SND as the Swedish Service Provider for CESSDA. As an SP, SND is active in many of the CESSDA areas, and currently involved in the work with certification of repositories, a guide to data archiving, the creation of a common technological platform, and in providing support and advice to aspiring and new CESSDA members. Previous involvement has been in, for example, the work with persistent identifiers and the development of a common metadata profile for CESSDA. SND is also responsible for the Swedish translations of the multilingual ELSST thesaurus and the controlled vocabularies provided by CESSDA Vocabulary Service.
As an SP, SND also takes part in CESSDA's working groups and projects. The latest project that SND took part in was the SSHOC – Social Sciences & Humanities Open Cloud cluster project. Other examples of previous projects are CESSDA SaW, SERSCIDA, DASISH, DwB, and CESSDA PPP.
Read more about previous projects that SND has participated in: Completed international projects.
Benefits to the research community
The Swedish membership in CESSDA provides Swedish researchers and students access to well-documented European research data, expert knowledge, and training resources in many fields.
The CESSDA tools and services include:
CESSDA Data Catalogue – A catalogue of the social science data that are accessible through the CESSDA SPs. The catalogue contains, at present, over 40,000 studies, described with standardized metadata and with direct links to the relevant SP, where you can download or order the data.
CESSDA Data Management Expert Guide – A guide to help social science researchers manage data throughout the research process, and to make their data and metadata FAIR.
CESSDA Training – CESSDA Training collects training resources and offers continuous webinars, workshops and other events to provide information and training in the latest news in research data management.
You can see more resources under Tools on the CESSDA website.
Further reading