Despite the coronavirus pandemic, CESSDA and its national Service Providers strive to serve the research community and online services continue to function as usual.

The CESSDA Data Catalogue is a platform for researchers wanting to find and reuse social science and humanities research data. It contains metadata of surveys in the holdings of CESSDA's Service Providers (SPs). The data files themselves are available through each individual data archive. All COVID-19-related metadata will be harvested to the Data Catalogue as they become available to CESSDA Service Providers.

There are some brand new COVID-19 datasets in the catalogue:

• Spread of COVID-19 in Austria. PCR-tests in a representative sample (SUF edition)
• GESIS Panel Special Survey on the Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak in Germany
• Understanding Society: COVID-19 Study, 2020-2021.

Some other relevant data related to pandemics can also be found in the catalogue.

Helena Laaksonen, Director of the Finnish Social Sciences Data Archive (FSD), has been appointed as CESSDA's official COVID-19 ambassador. Laaksonen can be approached directly by CESSDA SPs and partners who wish to share information related to COVID-19 or to cooperate with CESSDA in relation to COVID-19 social science and humanties (SSH) data.

"I am pleased to take on a leading role to assure that the critical activities being carried out by CESSDA's many national Service Providers to help SSH researchers continue their work are well-known and utilised," stated Laaksonen.

"It is crucial for us that vital social research carries on despite the current situation of political and funding uncertainty," stated Ron Dekker, Director of CESSDA. "CESSDA intends to be at the forefront of creating the Social Data component of the European COVID-19 Data Platform," Dekker added.

Find out more on our COVID-19 webpage.