The Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD) is a national resource centre providing a single point of access to a wide range of digital research data for learning, teaching and research purposes. Hear from Tuomas J. Alaterä, Senior Specialist at FSD.

The CESSDA Country Spotlight series showcases national service providers. We interviewed representatives of the national service providers, dear members of the CESSDA community. We asked them about the value CESSDA provides their data archive and vice versa.

The Finnish Social Science Data Archive

The Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD) promotes open access to research data as well as transparency, accumulation and efficient reuse of scientific research and is the first organisation in Finland to have been awarded the Data Seal of Approval (DSA).

FSD’s basic operations include archiving and dissemination of research data for reuse, but they also offer several other types of services for researchers, students and everyone else interested in issues regarding research data. FSD translates quantitative data on request into English (metadata is always translated) free of charge.

Senior Specialist Tuomas J. Alaterä about CESSDA

“We need insight from our users, those would be the researchers, but we also need insight from other people who do what we do, which is data curation and dissemination. In CESSDA we have a functioning network where we can collaborate, benchmark and work together towards harmonised FAIR data services for the social sciences and beyond.

We have seen that the number of students has gone up in terms of them using our services in different stages of their studies. They are the ones who reuse data and could be using our guidance or the tools we provide for collecting data. We try to target the content we have for our different groups: researchers, students, and teachers.” Tuomas J. Alaterä, Senior Specialist at FSD.

More information:

• Find out more about FSD
• Discover the FSD datasets in the CESSDA Data Catalogue
• The Aila Data Service provides access to data archived at FSD
• Read the previous Country Spotlight