status: Recognised & Endorsed

Chair (s): Ron Dekker, Jonathan Crabtree, Steven McEachern

Group Email: [group_email]

Secretariat Liaison: enquiries[at]rd-alliance.org


Social Sciences & Humanities Research Data Interest Group Proposal 

 

Introduction 

 

We are proposing a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Data (SSHRD) Interest Group under the auspices of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), to foster diverse professional exchange on issues particular to data originating from the social sciences and humanities.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Data cover many disciplines, appear in many data types, deal with multiple objects and levels, and are very distributed – coming from various sources. It could be described as a patchwork quilt, lacking a grand design or focus. On the other hand, it is a way to cover the whole spectrum, to be flexible in collecting data.

There is a huge potential reuse of SSHRD – for researchers, but also for professionals outside universities, for companies, governments, and for citizens.

 

As a research data community, we are entering the implementation phase of the FAIR principles: we can see first results on Findability – with various catalogues coming available. But for Accessibility, it already complicates as many social data are too sensitive to share directly: access to social sciences research data is not dichotomous: open or closed but requires fine-tuning on making data accessible. For better Interoperability, we need alignment on controlled vocabularies and ontologies, as well as semantic techniques to relate data. 

A barrier for Reuse is lack of clarity in data policies– and their implications for researchers: what are conditions and requirements for providing access, and for using the data. For Reuse, new users want information about the quality and provenance of the data: where do they come from, how were they collected and curated, etc.

 

Social Science & Humanities Research Data Interest Group Focused Initiatives

 

This new SSH interest group will begin by helping to coordinate communications across the various current RDA groups of interest to our disciplines and to provide a place for our members to share solutions and concerns with others in our fields. These groups include the FAIRSharing and others noted by Braukmann in the “RDA Overview for the Social Sciences”[1]. We will also seek input and coordinate with the external SSH community leaders and organizations such as CESSDA, DDI Alliance, IASSIST, ICPSR, IFDO and WDS. We will be open and inclusive seeking to use this group to connect the various organizations working to promote SSH data sharing. While this new interest group will certainly be a coordinating group, we also aim to produce new RDA Working Groups to help provide solutions to challenges in our SSH domains. Given the complexity of SSHRD, we feel that the initial focus of our interest group should be very focused on defining working groups of immediate need to our communities. We foresee that to implement FAIR in our disciplines we need to engage all stakeholders: funders, producers, service providers, users; and as a new interest group we want to prioritise on three specific areas focused on the Social Science and Humanities research data communities.

 

  • quality of data

find automated ways to investigate and provide information on quality

  • data policy

align – and wherever simplify – data policies and their implications for making data available and for using data. 

  • sensitive data

estimates are that over 40% of the data in our community is too sensitive to make them openly available without any restrictions or measures. 

 

This approach – to engage all relevant parties, and to focus on a limited number of topics – meets the Minimum Viable Ecosystem approach that is used for the EOSC, and has been used in building and expanding platforms, like Apple did (see frame)


In Apple’s case, the MP3 player represented a limited feature set (music only) but established the necessary minimum ecosystem (MVE). Next there was iTunes to add new music. But the big leap happened when they added partners who increased the feature set, moving towards the full rollout: Adding AT&T as a partner expanded the iPod into the iPhone, a more complete feature set. The rest is history. Source: https://smartorg.com/innovating-to-create-an-ecosystem/

Posts

05
December
2022

RDA 20th Plenary - Notification of Acceptance

by Secretariat Group Account

Dear Chairs of the Social Science Research Data IG Your RDA 20th Plenary (P20) session application titled SSIG plenary meeting - Growing international coordination across social science infrastructures has been approved. Please consider this your official notification of acceptance. * Draft programme to be published on Friday, 16th December 2022 * Any requests for changes must be made by Friday, 13th January 2023 * The programme will be deemed final by Thursday, 19th January 2023
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09
November
2022

Invitation to participate in 'A Decade of Data: 10 Years of the RDA' events and activities

by Connie Clare

Good day, The RDA Secretariat would like to invite the Social Science Research Data IG to participate in ‘A Decade of Data’: Celebrating 10 Years of the Research Data Alliance’. 10 months to celebrate 10 years of the RDA
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22
August
2022

Call for RDM experts in social sciences

by Ingmars Kreismanis

Dear members of Social Science Research Data IG, I am currently working in Riga Stradins University, which is predominantly a medical university, but we also have several strong programmes in social sciences. At the moment, we are developing our RDM system, including new Dataverse repository, implementing DMPs for research projects in Argos, guidelines etc.
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19
July
2022

Post-Plenary 19 Webinar

by Yolanda Meleco

After a successful Plenary 19 held last month, RDA chairs will be convening once again on 28 July to share the takeaways of the breakout sessions held during the event and discuss next steps. This is the first time a webinar of this type is being offered at RDA, which will hopefully provide members a clearer understanding of the collaboration approaches among RDA working and interest groups, as well as an opportunity to hear directly from chairs on their vision for future activities.
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27
June
2022

New FAIRsharing Community Curation Programme: Call for Participants

by Allyson Lister

We are proud to announce the official launch of the FAIRsharing Community Curation Programme! Together with our initial set of community curators, who have helped us prototype the programme and have already received attribution and other benefits, we are now actively seeking additional community curators across all subject areas (Engineering, Natural Sciences, and Humanities and the Social Sciences). In particular, we are looking to increase our provision within the Social Sciences and Humanities.
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29
April
2022

The GoTriple Pundit Web Annotation Tool - Training event 11th May 2pm CEST

by Tiziana Lombardo

Registrations now open for the online TRIPLE training "The GoTriple Pundit Annotation Tool " - 11 May 2022 at 2pm CEST   The TRIPLE Consortium is pleased to invite you to attend the next training session about The GoTriple Pundit Annotation Tool taking place on Wednesday, 11th May 2022 at 2pm (CEST).
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14
April
2022

RDA Plenary 19 Draft Programme Now Available

by Secretariat Group Account

Dear Group Chairs, The RDA 19th Plenary draft programme is now available: https://www.rd-alliance.org/rdas-19th-plenary-programme-0. Please note that the Plenary programme is a part of the International Data Week programme that can be accessed at https://www.rd-alliance.org/international-data-week-2022-programme.
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11
April
2022

Registrations now open for the online TRIPLE training "Multilingual Vocabularies for the Social Sciences and Humanities" - 20 April 2022 at 2pm CEST

by Tiziana Lombardo

This training webinar will be a synergy of TRIPLE and SSHOC projects, and it will be devoted especially to the creation, use and management of controlled vocabularies in the SSH. Controlled vocabularies are organized arrangements of words and phrases used to annotate, index and retrieve content through browsing or searching. Multilingualism is an essential feature for the SSH, this is why multilingual SSH vocabularies are greatly needed. The training event will provide answers to the following questions, among others:
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28
March
2022

SSHOC'n Tell Challenge. Try our tools and tell your user story!

by Marieke Willems

SSHOC invites you to the SSHOC’n Tell Challenge, an exciting online event, part of the SSHOC final conference Advancing SSH Research with SSHOCingly good and sustainable resources on the mornings of 6 & 7 April. 
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25
March
2022

RDA Plenary 19 as a part of IDW 2022 - Notification of Acceptance

by Secretariat Group Account

Dear Chairs of the Social Science Research Data IG, Congratulations! Your RDA Plenary 19 (P19) session application titled Social Science IG Plenary meeting - progress so far and directions for future activity has been approved. Please consider this your official notification of acceptance.
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