Social Sciences Council calls for better access to social science databases in the Netherlands

["Ecpa" <Ecpa _at__ bureau.knaw.nl>]

With apologies for cross-posting
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Press release

Amsterdam, 14 October 2003

The Social Sciences Council of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences (KNAW) calls for better access to social science databases

The availability and accessibility of the databases used by researchers in the
social sciences need to be improved. A number of 'expertise centres' should be
set up at Dutch research institutes as well as a national centre for data
services that brings together providers of data. These are among the
recommendations in an advisory report on a new and improved data
infrastructure for the social sciences that has been compiled by the Social
Sciences Council of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
(SWR-KNAW).

Researchers in the social sciences have been using existing databases much
more intensively in the last two decades, primarily because of advances in
ICT, improved research methods and techniques, and the fact that data can now
be gathered and reused on an international scale. As things stand at present,
professional data providers in the Netherlands are not up to the task of
meeting the increased and refocused demands of researchers for data. This
creates a need for a national centre for data services in which existing data
providers such as the Scientific Statistical Agency (WSA) of the Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Steinmetz Archive and the
Netherlands Historical Data Archive (NHDA) of the Netherlands Institute for
Scientific Information Services (NIWI-KNAW) join forces and develop their
expertise further.

The SWR also recommends that 'expertise centres' should be developed at Dutch
research institutes, focusing on a range of themes in the social sciences.
Databases should be made available and accessible at these expertise centres
for researchers in the social sciences specialising in those themes.

It is important that the national centre for data services should form a
network with the expertise centres. The SWR recommends that the Academy and
NWO set up a scientific steering committee in the near future to promote the
formation of this network.

The KNAW Board has decided to take close account of the SWR recommendations in
determining the future of the various components of the Netherlands Institute
for Scientific Information Services (NIWI-KNAW), which is to be abolished in
its present form in the foreseeable future.

The Board intends to enter into consultations with NWO in the near future on
the recommendation concerning a national centre for data services.


The report Networked Data Services; Towards a Future Data Infrastructure for
the Social Sciences in the Netherlands (September 2003) can be found as a PDF
file at http://www.knaw.nl/publicaties/pdf/20031077.pdf


For more information contact:
KNAW, Het Trippenhuis, Kloveniersburgwal 29, Amsterdam.
P.O. Box 19121, 1000 GC Amsterdam.
Afdeling Voorlichting tel +31 (0)20-5510733, fax +31 (0)20-6204941.
voorlichting _at__ bureau.knaw.nl

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European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA)
P.O. Box 19121, NL-1000 GC  Amsterdam,
visiting address: c/o KNAW, Trippenhuis, Kloveniersburgwal 29,
NL-1011 JV  Amsterdam, The Netherlands
tel. ++31 - 20 - 551 08 39   fax  ++31 - 20 - 620 49 41
URL: http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/