RatSWD is an elected body that articulates the needs of our communities and thus drives the user-oriented improvement of our infrastructure. The strength of our data infrastructure is the shared understanding that many data can only be made available for (secondary) use if they remain with the data providers. With their expertise, the data providers also ensure the highest possible quality of the data.

TA1

Community participation and user integration are the basis for all of KonsortSWD’s activities. Each Task Area (TA) explicitly connects to and involves the scientific community in the development and implementation of its services and activities. TA 1, building on the German Data Forum (RatSWD) which brings together data users and data producers, comprises a set of measures that add to and reach beyond the activities in other TAs. The data and services of this existing infrastructure are already being requested and used by researchers worldwide, for example through research data centres (RDC) accredited and quality-assured by the RatSWD.

TA2

Task Area 2 bundles, continues, and develops important activities aiming at an integrated and harmonised data access. The infrastructures and services support efforts to ensure and enhance the quality and FAIRness of (sensitive) data – particularly given the growing number of data types. It also coordinates data and metadata generation and standardisation to achieve interoperability and to improve availability of privacy-sensitive and other restricted data for research purposes. The network of currently 39 research data centres (RDCs) accredited by the German Data Forum provides a strong basis for this infrastructure. It is structured by the Committee for Data Access (CDA, Committee for Research Data Infrastructure, de: FDI Ausschuss). CDA and TA2 mutually complement each other and shape the coordinated development of the established, highly effective distributed infrastructure.

TA3

Task Area 3 aims to benefit data producers by making standards and tools of research data management sustainable and by improving long-term archiving. For data users, the range of available data and the variety of data types will be expanded by enabling linkage of data types and opening up new possibilities for the use of existing data. TA 3 will provdide services in the following areas:

• interoperability and reusability of survey data through ex-ante/ex-post harmonization
• standards for research data management (RDM) for qualitative data
• unstructured text data use and linkage with standardized survey data
• efficiency and quality of coding for (semi-)open response formats
• non-proprietary data formats and long-term archiving.

TA5

This Task Area addresses offer Technical Solutions to three key challenges: 

• • the lack of interoperability and reusability at the element level of data sets (e.g., survey variables).
  • the lack of visibility and discoverability of data on the web
  • the great technical heterogeneity and fragmentation of the current research data landscape.

Accordingly, the Task Area aims to improve the FAIRness within these focus areas:

• • • PID services for survey variables and other relevant entities (such as questions, video fragments, or the like).
    • Development and implementation of a sustainable visibility strategy for KonsortSWD data through broad adoption of web standards.
    • Improving the overall data exchange process and connectivity through open and standardized APIs (taking into account community and web standards)

Added value for the community:

• • Facilitated data citation at the individual element level of survey studies (such as survey variables), thereby improving reproducibility of research
  • More visibility and findability of data on the Web (including at the level of individual data objects such as variables and questions from survey studies)
  • Increased efficiency in making data available to the community through a transparent and standardized data exchange process
  • Improved linkability with data from other communities through standardized data exchange formats

TA6

KonsortSWD’s Secretariat Task-Area supports and coordinates decision-making processes within the consortium and is responsible for financial, contract and quality management.