CESSDA launches a new website which focuses on its user groups and has more to offer researchers.

Three key services are highlighted: CESSDA Data Catalogue, Data Management Expert Guide and Training. What’s more, our various Tools & Services are categorised by user group and easily findable from the homepage.

Promoting our tools & services and aligning with EOSC

The social sciences cover multiple disciplines and many communities, studying human behaviour and decision-making, interactions in societies and organisations, development levels, governance, politics and much more. In a way, social sciences is about us and the people are our data.

CESSDA develops tools & services for researchers – either as data producers or as data users. We want to coordinate standards for metadata, provide a technology platform – together with other research infrastructures. We also want to be renowned for our training on data management and data discovery & use. CESSDA is dedicated to building quality and trust in the data ecosystem, not least via the certification of our data service providers and by working on the quality of the data.

“CESSDA intends to play a significant role in shaping the European Open Science Cloud Portal, which is being defined later this month in Vienna,” stated Ron Dekker, CESSDA Director. “As a consortium of trusted repositories with European coverage and thanks to our broad offer of tools and services, we can help researchers reap the full benefits of data-driven science,” Ron Dekker said.

Listening to our CESSDA community

We mapped the needs of all our stakeholders: data users, data providers, service providers and members and crossed checked them with our tools and services.

For Data Users, we offer the CESSDA Data Catalogue, a platform for researchers wanting to find and reuse social science and humanities research data.

For Data Producers, we have an up-to-date Data Management Expert Guide, designed by European experts to help social science researchers make their research data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

We also have a Training portal where offer training activities, advice and educational resources. Do you want to become a well-trained researcher in data management and data use? Look for a suitable date and training session in our Training Event Calendar.

For Service Providers, we also offer back-office tools, such as a Controlled Vocabularies Manager (coming soon), a Capability Development Model which provides both a starting point for emerging preservation initiatives and a reference tool for established archives. We also have a Cost-Benefit Advocacy Toolkit to support funding and business cases.

For Members and potential members, we have a Guide for Developing National Data Service Plans and best practices from Service Providers.

What’s in store for the coming months?

CESSDA will be delivering additional user-orientated tools and services in the coming 24 months, as we align with EOSC and comply with the FAIR Data principles,.

Over to you now

Browse the new CESSDA website and keep an eye out for our upcoming new services on Twitter @CESSDA_Data and LinkedIn.