Date: 
05 March 2021

 

Two recent webinars gave a boost to the task of developing a social sciences and humanities data repository service based on Dataverse.

Task 5.2 of the SSHOC project requires the development of a data repository service on EOSC for SSH institutions. Development is underway using the open source, community driven platform Dataverse as a basis and adapting the software to suit the requirements of the research infrastructures. 

 

Responses from participants in two separate webinars organised by SSHOC partners CESSDA/ADP and LIBER, one with CESSDA associates - primarily service providers and data experts - and the other with DARIAH associates - researchers and research institutes - provided the developers with important insights into the requirements of each user group. 

 

Configuring Dataverse for Service Providers: CESSDA Webinar 

The webinar was delivered by DataverseNL Service Manager Marion Wittenberg, and DANS colleagues Laura Huis in ‘t Veld, functional manager, and Vyacheslav Tykhonov, data scientist. Their goal was to present the Dataverse data repository functionality and the features under development to CESSDA service providers and data experts and collect input regarding installation, organisation and extra functionalities.

Of the 46 webinar participants, 36 were representatives of CESSDA member organisations, while 6 represented CESSDA partners.

Adaptations

Dataverse is less suitable than Nesstar for publishing granular study data, but has several advantages over other repository platforms. These include adaptability to a range of data types, persistent identifiers on both study and file level, and abiity to accommodate a range of user permissions.

In adapting Dataverse, SSHOC is developing Weblate service, a tool for multilingual translations for the user interface, metadata schema, and Solr. External controlled vocabularies will support interoperability. Data previewers for a wide range of formats will also be developed, as well as a data processing tool to migrate Nesstar DDI to Dataverse.

 

Go to the event page to access the webinar recording and presentation slides as well as a summary of the Q&A session.

 

 

Configuring Dataverse for Researchers: DARIAH Webinar

The webinar was delivered by Marion Wittenberg (DANS) and Peter Kiraly, software developer and researcher at SSHOC partner Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. The purpose of this webinar was to present the Dataverse data repository functionality and the features under development to researchers and research institutes and collect input on the essential requirements for such a service, and preferences regarding installation, organisation, and necessary training.

Of 33 participants from the DARIAH community, the majority were from research libraries and archives. Universities and academic institutions were also represented as were researchers and research infrastructures.

Dataverse for Research Communities

Archiving and sharing data with Dataverse contributes to the reproducibility and long-term usability of data. Dataverse as an open source repository software is supported and developed by a large and diverse community worldwide. SSHOC is developing a mature software pipeline to adapt it to the European research infrastructure landscape.

During the webinar, the main elements of Dataverse software were demonstrated in the Harvard Dataverse and Texas Data Repository Dataverse and the planned adaptations outlined - see slide below.

 

 

Go to the event page to access the webinar recording and presentation slides as well as a summary of the Q&A session.

 

Further reading

Dataverse for the SSHOC Community 3 September 2020

Developing the SSHOC Dataverse 11 July 2019