Finnish Social Science Data Archive

Secondary analysis of qualitative data entails reusing data created from previous research projects for new purposes. Reuse provides an opportunity to study the raw materials of past research projects to gain methodological and substantive insights. In the past decade, use of the approach has grown rapidly in the United Kingdom to become sufficiently accepted that it must now be regarded as mainstream. Several factors explain this growth: the open data movement, research funders’ and publishers’ policies supporting data sharing, and researchers seeing benefits from sharing resources, including data. Another factor enabling qualitative data reuse has been improved services and infrastructure that facilitate access to thousands of data collections. The UK Data Service is an example of a well-established facility; more recent has been the proliferation of repositories being established within universities. This article will provide evidence of the growth of data reuse in the United Kingdom and in Finland by presenting both data and case studies of reuse that illustrate the breadth and diversity of this maturing research method. We use two distinct data sources that quantify the scale, types, and trends of reuse of qualitative data: (a) downloads of archived data collections held at data repositories and (b) publication citations. Although the focus of this article is on the United Kingdom, some discussion of the international environment is provided, together with data and examples of reuse at the Finnish Social Science Data Archive. The conclusion summarizes the major findings, including some conjectures regarding what makes qualitative data attractive for reuse and sharing.

BACKGROUND: Some studies suggest that leg length discrepancy (LLD) is associated with low back pain (LBP) but many have not found such an association leading to conflicting evidence on the role of LLD in LBP. METHODS: The study population consisted of meat cutters with a standing job and customer service workers with a sedentary job from Atria Suomi Ltd (Nurmo, Finland) who were at least 35 years old and had been working in their jobs for at least 10 years. Leg length of each participant was measured with a laser range meter fixed in a rod, which was holding the scanning head of the ultrasound apparatus. Association of the intensity of LBP (10-cm Visual Analog Scale) with LLD was analysed by linear regression model, while the hurdle model was used in analysing the association of number of days with LBP and days on sick leave during the past year. Associations were adjusted by gender, age, BMI, smoking, depressive feelings and type of work (standing or sedentary job). RESULTS: The final study population consisted of 114 meat cutters (26 females and 88 males) and 34 customer service workers (30 females and four males). Forty-nine percent of the meat cutters and 44% of the customer service workers had LLD of at least 6 mm, while 16% and 15%, respectively, had LLD of at least 11 mm. In the whole study population, LLD of 6 mm or more was associated with higher intensity of LBP and number of days with LBP. In the stratified analysis, both intensity of LBP and number of days of LBP were associated with LLD among meat cutters but not among customer service workers. The sick leaves during past year were slightly longer among those with LLD 10 mm or more, but the differences were not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: LLD, measured with a laser range meter, was associated with intensity of LBP and self-reported days with LBP during the past year among meat cutters engaged in standing work. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN11898558--The role of leg length discrepancy in low back pain.

National and international digital repositories must design and deliver sustainable services as a foundation for a range of scientific and data management infrastructures while reducing costs and avoiding duplication of effort. The CoreTrustSeal, launched in 2017, defines requirements and offers core level certification for Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDR) holding data for long-term preservation. This paper traces the journey of the CoreTrustSeal through the Data Seal of Approval (DSA), ICSU World Data System (WDS), Research Data Alliance (RDA) working groups, and community engagement, towards becoming a sustainable service supporting global data infrastructure. We outline the design and delivery of the service, current activities, the benefits of certification to a range of communities, and future plans and challenges. As well as providing a historical narrative and current and future perspectives the CoreTrustSeal experience offers lessons for those developing standards and best practices, or seeking to develop cooperative and community-driven efforts which bridge data curation across academic disciplines and the governmental and private sectors.

The Finnish Social Science Data Archive is a newcomer in the area of data archiving for two reasons, firstly: it started its operation only in 1999 and secondly: from the very beginning it has had as an official strategy to enhance the reuse of available qualitative as well as quantitative data. Archiving and reusing of data has been a common and continuously expanding practise in quantitative research since the 1950s and 1960s. Qualitative research has thus far been almost invisible in this respect, except for a few successful cases like Qualidata in Essex, UK and Murray Research Center at Harvard, USA. Questions concerning archiving and reusing of qualitative data are many. Here I will concentrate on a very practical but important issue in making qualitative data reusable, i.e. documentation of data. I highlight some reasons for making appropriate and adequate data documentation and give the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) as an example of documenting social science data. The DDI was meant for quantitative data, but I claim that it can be used and elaborated for the special needs of qualitative data as well. Choosing the same documentation model for qualitative and quantitative data would be one step towards social science data archives which would have both quantitative and qualitative data. This would support their basic task of promoting a sensible use of all research resources. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0003194

(2003). What is the Irish Social Science Data Archive? Irish Political Studies: Vol. 17, No. sup1, pp. 1-3.

Although FAIR Research Data Principles are targeted at and implemented by different communities, research disciplines, and research stakeholders (data stewards, curators, etc.), there is no conclusive way to determine the level of FAIRness intended or required to make research artefacts (including, but not limited to, research data) Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. The FAIR Principles cover all types of digital objects, metadata, and infrastructures. However, they focus their narrative on data features that support their reusability. FAIR defines principles, not standards, and therefore they do not propose a mechanism to achieve the behaviours they describe in an attempt to be technology/implementation neutral. FAIR is evolving in some expected and some unexpected ways. FAIR “Reusability” sub-principle R1.3 states that "(meta)data should meet domain-relevant community standards," which predicts a proliferation of FAIR interpretations by individual communities as they select their preferred approach to FAIRness. Similarly, as expected, there is an active movement around the adaptation of the FAIR Principles to digital objects other than data (e.g., software and workflows), again with individual communities interpreting what FAIRness means in these expanded contexts. However, there have also been attempts to expand the FAIR Principles themselves in recent years, including features of digital objects beyond reusability, including popularity (reuse/citation), reproducibility, reliability, data quality, etc. All of this is occurring with no overall coordination or planning. A range of FAIR assessment metrics and tools have been designed that measure FAIRness. Unfortunately, the same digital objects assessed by different tools often exhibit widely different outcomes because of these independent interpretations of FAIR. This results in confusion among the publishers, the funders, and the users of digital research objects. Moreover, in the absence of a standard and transparent definition of what constitutes FAIR behaviours, there is a temptation to define existing approaches as being FAIR-compliant rather than having FAIR define the expected<br> behaviours. While it is anticipated that communities will define domain-specific FAIR metrics and tests, it is desirable to avoid "gaming the system" and have broadly agreed-upon approaches to FAIRness that do not favour a specific implementation of technology. These observations suggest a growing need to align the different interpretations of the FAIR Principles. However, this whitepaper does not suggest that the FAIR Principles themselves require governance. Indeed, the document argues that the Principles should remain untouched. Specialised communities should extend/edit those Principles to adapt and make them more relevant to their community and their specific research outcome intended to be FAIR. This whitepaper identifies three high-level stakeholder categories -FAIR decision and policymakers, FAIR custodians, and FAIR practitioners - and provides examples outlining specific stakeholders' (hypothetical but anticipated) needs. It also examines possible models for governance based on the existing peer efforts, standardisation bodies, and other ways to acknowledge specifications and potential benefits. This whitepaper can serve as a starting point to foster an open discussion around FAIRness governance and the mechanism(s) that could be used to implement it, to be trusted, broadly representative, appropriately scoped, and sustainable.

In the beginning of its operations, the Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD) started to use a simple Access97 database for managing the archiving process of data. This database, called Tiipii, was developed gradually as the routine procedures for archiving were being established. In 2002 FSD started a new project called Tiipii2, aiming to replace the old interface and database with a more user friendly graphical user interface (GUI) and a new relational database. At the moment the GUI is at the testing stage. It will be used to control the data archiving process and to handle internal and external information services. The project has been implemented by open source tools. The paper presents the system which consists of 1) PostgreSQL database in Linux platform, 2) Java code using J2SE, and 3) CORBA architecture using JacORB, which is a free Java implementation of the OMG's CORBA standard.

Experiences and ideas from the Finnish Social Science Data Archive which provides web services on three languages but with somewhat different goals for each. The presentation focuses on what to take into account when planning multilingual services, and what kind of pitfalls or good practices there are. Should the existing web site and services just be reproduced in another language, with the same content? If not, then what? It is only after the goals, potential service users and available resources have been outlined that we have a basis from which to plan the web design. The presentation includes advice on some aspects of web design, and an introduction on how to use the DDI to facilitate multilingual data documentation.

Preserving digital data is a challenge. For the outcome to be successful, many organisational and practical issues need to be in place. The Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD, http://www.fsd.uta.fi/) is dedicated to support the life cycle of digital research data in social sciences. It is therefore critical that FSD's operations and procedures are up-to-date and consistent with relevant standards and best practices. The key standard for long term preservation of digital data is the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (ISO14721:2003). This presentation will explore FSD's conformance to OAIS and describe how FSD's functions map to the seven OAIS functions (ingest, archival storage, data management, administration, preservation planning, access and common services), with special attention to ingest and access. We will also discuss the process and results of a self-assessment that was conducted analysing FSD policies, plans and procedures within the framework of the Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDR) Checklist (CCSDS 652.0-M-1). We will summarise the weaknesses, risks and strengths identified, discuss the use of the TDR metrics and analyse how adopting standards and best practices could facilitate co-operation and collaborative partnerships.

The Open Science and Research Reference Architecture describes the desired state of the target area in 2030. Reference Architecture was developed on the initiative of the National Open Science and Research Steering Group and the Ministry of Education and Culture. The reference architecture enables a controlled development and response of open science and research in continuous change. It ensures the stability of research structures as important facilitators of research.&#x0D; The Open Science and Research Reference Architecture is based on the goals set out in the Declaration for Open Science and Research, as well as the policies specifying these goals and the objectives and actions derived from them. Where necessary, the architecture has been complemented on the basis of international open science frameworks, such as UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.&#x0D; There is no clear boundary between open science and closed science; rather, the open and closed variants form a continuum, where previously closed datasets may become open over time, for example. This is why the reference architecture describes the structures of science and research extensively – as open as possible and as restricted as necessary.&#x0D; The Open Science and Research Reference Architecture was created by a two-year working group appointed by the National Open Science and Research Steering Group. In the spring of 2021, a preparation group appointed by the Steering group prepared the task assignment for the working group. The working group chairs included Jukka Heikkilä from the Finnish Union of University Professors (first chair in 2022) and Susanna Nykyri from Tampere University (first chair in 2023). Ilmari Jauhiainen and Marita Kari from the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies served as the secretaries of the working group. The Open Science and Research Reference Architecture underwent a round of public feedback for the period of 17 April – 2 June 2023.

Accompanying the growing importance of research data management, the provision and maintenance of metadata – understood as data about (research) data – have obtained a key role in contextualizing, understanding, and preserving research data. Acknowledging the importance of metadata in the social sciences, the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives started the Metadata Office project in 2019. This project report presents the various activities of the Metadata Office (MDO). Metadata models, schema, controlled vocabularies and thesauri are covered, including the MDO’s collaboration with the DDI Alliance on multilingual translations of DDI vocabularies for CESSDA Service Providers. The report also summarizes the communication, training and advice provided by MDO, including DDI use across CESSDA, illustrates the impact of the project for the social science and research data management community, and offers an outline regarding future plans of the project.

This working paper is a bottom-up initiative of a group of stakeholders from the European repository community. Its purpose is to outline an aspirational vision of a European Network of FAIR-enabling Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs). This initiative originates from the workshop entitled “Towards exploring the idea of establishing the Network”. The paper was created in close connection with the wider community, as its core was built on community feedback and the first draft of the paper was shared for community-wide consultation. This paper will serve as input for the EOSC Task Force on Long Term Digital Preservation. One of the core activities mentioned in the charter of this Task Force is to produce recommendations on the creation of such a network. The working paper puts together a vision of how a European network of FAIR-enabling TDRs could be based on the community’s needs and its most important functions: Networking and knowledge exchange, stakeholder advocacy and engagement, and coordination and development. The specific activities hosted under these umbrella functions could address the wide range of topics that are important to TDRs. Beyond these functions and the challenges they address, the paper presents a framework to highlight aspects of the Network to further explore in the next steps of its development.

This publication is version 1.0 of the Onboarding Guidelines for the EOSC Finland Pilot Node, written by the national Open Science EOSC working group. The guidelines detail how a resource may be onboarded onto the pilot node at a national or EOSC Federation level, or both. An English-Finnish glossary of EOSC terminology is provided as an appendix. Tämä julkaisu on EOSC Finland -pilottinoodin liittymisohjeiden ensimmäinen versio, jonka on tuottanut avoimen tieteen kansallinen EOSC-työryhmä. Ohjeet kattavat resurssin liittämisen pilottinoodiin kansallisella ja/tai EOSC-federaation tasolla. Englanti–suomi-sanasto EOSC-terminologiasta on ohjeissa liitteenä.

This dataset contains two files: (1) a crosswalk between CESSDA Data Catalogue (CDC) DDI2.5 Metadata Profile (https://cmv.cessda.eu/profiles/cdc/ddi-2.5/1.0.4/profile.html) and ECRIN Metadata Schema for Clinical Research Data Objects Version 6.0 (August 2021) (https://zenodo.org/record/5554961) with an extension to “geographical data” and (2) vice versa.

What does it mean to be a member of IASSIST these days? Does IASSIST do anything other than host annual conferences? Come talk with members of the Communications Committee, the Membership Chair and other IASSIST officials to discuss these and other burning questions you may have. This interactive poster session will reveal ways to get more deeply involved in IASSIST in between conferences by joining committees or interest groups. Perhaps you want to give something back to the organization you love so much. Perhaps you have an idea how the organization can do things better (and even better, the time to help us put it into practice). Perhaps you want to know if others share an important professional interest and how to take that forward. Or, perhaps you are a new member and are just curious to know what makes IASSIST tick. The poster will explain how the committee structure of IASSIST works, how you can contribute your time or expertise to benefit the organization, and will present results of the recent members' survey. More importantly, IASSIST committee members will be at the poster session ready to talk to you about YOUR needs and interests regarding any aspect of the organization. A suggestion box will be available for anyone wishing to provide anonymous feedback. IASSIST is currently 100 percent volunteer run. We know we're not perfect. Help us improve through your active participation and feedback.

This presentation outlines the latest update to the CoreTrustSeal certification requirements (v04.00), which will guide repository certification from 2026 to 2028. Reflecting extensive community consultation, the update introduces minimal but meaningful revisions to maintain stability while emphasizing active preservation as a core feature of trustworthy repositories. Attendees will learn about the update process, key changes, and how to stay involved as CoreTrustSeal evolves to meet the future of trustworthy data stewardship.

The CESSDA Vocabulary Service (CVS) allows communities and organisations to host and publish their own vocabularies for users to search and download. For this, CESSDA has developed a tool that provides both a discovery interface where vocabularies can be searched, browsed and downloaded and an editing interface where the vocabularies are managed and translated. The editor also includes an access and user management interface and allows versioning with persistent identifiers and citation of the controlled vocabularies. All content is available through an API. This document specifies the different roles and responsibilities related to the CESSDA Vocabulary Service.

This dataset contains two files: (1) a crosswalk between CESSDA Data Catalogue (CDC) DDI2.5 Metadata Profile (https://cmv.cessda.eu/profiles/cdc/ddi-2.5/1.0.4/profile.html) and ECRIN Metadata Schema for Clinical Research Data Objects Version 6.0 (August 2021) (https://zenodo.org/record/5554961) with an extension to “geographical data” and (2) vice versa.

BY-COVID Work Package 3 is focused on services for the discovery and integration of COVID-19 data by delivering a flexible, tiered metadata discovery system across different domains, metadata standards, and maturity/robustness levels of data sources. This will enable the linking of FAIR data and metadata on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, on other related viruses and diseases, and on socio-economic consequences, across research fields, from omics, clinical, and epidemiological research, to social sciences and humanities. In a series of work package meetings and a workshop, with participation from all other work packages, we have surveyed community metadata standards used by (potential) BY-COVID-19 portal resources (4.1), defined a flexible, three-tiered approach to metadata indexing in the COVID-19 portal (section 4.2), derived common metadata attributes for record level discovery (4.3) and established a workflow with FAIRsharing for resource level metadata capture and exchange (4.4). This work establishes the basis for the further development of the COVID-19 Portal metadata discovery and provides a path for integration of metadata from multi-domain partners in BY-COVID, as well as our ISIDORe sibling project, and relevant external resources. To ensure smooth integration of partner-provided metadata, we will run a technical workshop open to all partners, discussing workflows, metadata attributes and formats, and support tools.

This is a FIDELIS Implementation Story, describing the experiences, lessons learned, and advice from participants in the pilot 'Support for the Adoption of Solutions' support offer "Enhancing Repository Transparency and Trustworthiness with TTRAM"The TTRAM support introduced the Transparent Trustworthy Repository Attributes Matrix and focused on key sections: Context, Digital Object Management, and Organisational Infrastructure. Participants engaged in expert-led discussions, peer exchange, and populating the matrix, supported both during and between sessions. The support offer fostered collaboration, improved understanding of TTRAM, and helped repositories identify strengths, gaps, and practical steps for development. Overall, participants valued the training, achieved their goals, and regarded TTRAM as a useful framework for enhancing services and practices.