GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences

GESIS is the largest infrastructure institution in Germany serving to promote scientific research in this field. Our services can be categorized from the users’ perspective according to the research data cycle. This cycle comprises data and information research, study planning, including empirical research data collection and storage, preparation, archiving and retrieval of research data, on up through the analysis and publication phases.

GESIS is a member of the Leibniz Association and participates in European projects like European Social Survey (ESS), European Values Study (EVS), the Council of European Social Science Data Archives CESSDA or OECD’s project PIAAC.

In February 2010 we became member of DataCite and initiated a pilot project to establish a DOI registration service for social science data. Since 2011 GESIS and the German National Library of Economics (ZBW) have been operating the Registration agency for social and economic data da|ra. This infrastructure will lay the foundations for a permanent identification, storage, localizing and ultimately a reliable citability of research data in both disciplines.

da|ra provides DOI registration services for German research data centers in the fields of social sciences and economics. Besides DOI name registration we operate a comprehensive metadata schema (compatible to DataCite MDS) to ensure proper citation, and in future peer review, of registered social and economic data.

Our current focus is on providing DOI names for primary data occurring in the research data cycle. Via our open access repository SSOAR we offer an additional service for open access publications.