da|ra – the registration agency for social and economic data

The ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and GESIS – Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences are working together to develop a registration agency for research data in social sciences and economics.

GESIS started the pilot project for the not-for-profit registration agency dara in 2010 in order to make research data permanently identifiable and available through the assignation of DOI names.

The cooperation with the ZBW was officially initiated in 2011 and augments the services of da|ra by offering registration for economic research data as well as for objects from the social sciences.

The registration agency aims to support scholars in their efforts to give access to the primary data resulting from their research. This also serves to reproduce the entire research process.

This infrastructure will lay the foundations for a permanent identification, storage, localisation and reliable citability of research data.

The registration agency for social and economic data will have its own web presence at the end of 2011. Until then, the pilot project can be found at www.gesis.org/dara.

The ZBW and GESIS are members of DataCite, an international initiative to establish universal standards for research data. In this initiative, the two institutions are allied with leading research libraries and technical information centres in the effort to promote the acceptance of research data as independent, citable scientific objects.