The CESSDA Strengthening and Widening meeting in Milan earlier this year, organised in collaboration with the Interdepartmental Centre UniData – Bicocca Archive addressed the results, services and future vision of CESSDA.

Ahead of the next widening event in Belgrade, Sonia Stefanizzi, Director of UniData - Bicocca Data Archive, presents the potential benefits for Italy of joining the consortium and why she is looking forward to the CESSDA Data Catalogue coming online.

1) What would be the top three benefits for you of joining CESSDA?

Becoming a member of CESSDA will allow us to:

• be part of a European research infrastructure, strengthening relationships with other European partners and facilitating the exchange and use of data at a European level;
• share and spread best practices in data archiving, improve our knowledge and skills in data curation and data preservation;
• build a national academic network in the social science and humanities (SSH) field in order to disseminate research data and promote secondary analysis following the FAIR principles.

2) What do you think of the upcoming CESSDA Data Catalogue? Will it make research in the social sciences more efficient?

The CESSDA Data Catalogue is a very important resource since it applies the FAIR principles to research data.

It brings together the different catalogues published by the national service providers making data:

• more findable: it makes it possible to find the desired data in a very fast and easy way at a European level;
• more visible: data are directly linked to the national service provider that preserve them and with upfront information on access conditions;
• more comparable: it is based on a structured and widespread metadata scheme which enables the finding of comparable data.

At UniData, we think that the CESSDA Data Catalogue will certainly make research more efficient in the SSH field.

More information:

Strengthening and widening, Belgrade - 14-15 November 2018

CESSDA interviews ESFRI Chair Jan Hrušák (12 October)

CESSDA addresses potential member countries during a two-day event in Milan (5 June)

ESFRI Roadmap 2018