The map depicts the 5 European research infrastructures for Social and Human Sciences as defined in the ESFRI 2010 Roadmap along with the rest 8 research infrastructures in all other disciplines (https://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/index_en.cfm?pg=esfri-roadmap).

The focus on the map lies on the headquarters of each inftrastructure co-ordinator. The five european research infrastructures in Social Sciences and Humanities are presented hereafter:

 

  • CESSDA: Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives

CESSDA – the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives constitutes the European research infrastructure for social sciences. CESSDA provides data and high quality services with regard to the data archiving and management along with training services to any interested researcher and potential user. CESSDA will support research and collaborations at local and international level in fields of great importance while fostering research and contributing towards ameliorating contemporary social challenges and issues.
CESSDA has been set up at the beginning of ’70s from Social Sciences Data Archives around Europe and operated as un umbrella organization of data archives. Since June 2013 CESSDA operates as a legal entity under Norwegian law and it is expected to turn to CESSDA ERIC into the near future. The distributed RI is located in Bergen-Norway, whilst the training services are coordinated by GESIS in Cologne –Germany. CESSDA in its current legal form counts 14 member states among which the latest in chronological order membership is that of the Greek RI So.Da.Net_GR. CESSDA looks forward to integrating more European countries during the following years.
More at: http://cessda.net/

CESSDA Services:
CESSDA provides data and surveys available online open source accessed to any interested user. It has contributed through its multi-annual operation as a Consortium of Data Archives and the last two years as a legal entity in promoting and increasing the use of data internationally. Through its operation and services provided on documented and reliable data has driven data culture change, as well as, attracted social scientists across Europe in using the available data for research purposes. CESSDA through GESIS provides educational training seminars and workshops addressed to users interested in cutting-edge topics related to data documentation/management and other issues regarding social sciences data. 
More at: http://cessda.net/CESSDA-Services


CESSDA Catalogue:
The CESSDA data/surveys can be searched and downloaded through the authorized by each country data providers (Service provider). The data search is undertaken in 9 languages either at a thematic level (CESSDA classification) or with the use of keywords based on the multilingual thesaurus ELSST (translated already in 9 languages) or even through each provider. 
More at: http://cessda.net/Data-Catalogue


CESSDA Training:
An ongoing information flow concerning CESSDA training services is provided through the CESSDA website. Training activities are available to the research community as well as to national data archives. The main thematic areas concern training to data management and archiving. In parallel, relevant supportive material and useful links are free accessed.
More at: http://cessda.net/CESSDA-Training

 

  • ESS : European Social Survey

The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically driven cross-national survey that has been conducted every two years across Europe since 2002. ESS is governed by a Central Scientific Committee headed by Rory Fitzgerald at the City University, UK in co-operation with the following six academic institutions:

The survey measures the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour patterns of diverse populations in more than thirty nations.
The main objectives of the ESS are: 

  • to chart stability and change in social structure, conditions and attitudes in Europe and to interpret how Europe’s social, political and moral fabric is changing,
  • to achieve and spread higher standards of rigour in cross-national research in the social sciences, including for example, sampling, data collection, reduction of bias and the reliability of questions,
  • to introduce soundly-based indicators of national progress based on citizens’ perceptions and judgments of key aspects of their societies,
  • to undertake and facilitate the training of European social researchers in comparative quantitative measurement and analysis,
  • to improve the visibility and outreach of data on social change among academics, policy makers and the wider public.

Empirical data are freely accessible at the Programmes website and include data from all the rounds (http://nesstar.ess.nsd.uib.no/webview/ ). Greece has so far participated to 5 rounds since 20012.
More at: http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org

 

  • SHARE ERIC : Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) consists of a database that draws data from different scientific fields and different countries, while is operating throughout the year through a selected sample of individuals. The data contained at the database are on health, socio-economic status and social and family networks, while covering more than 40.000 individuals aged 50 years old or older. Eleven countries have contributed data at the first implementation of the SHARE survey in 2004. It is considered a balanced representation of the various regions in Europe from Scandinavia to Central Europe and the Mediterranean. In addition, in 2005-6 data have, also, been collected in Israel. Greece is participating as well to the sixth research data collection wave in 2014-15.
SHARE is centrally coordinated at the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA). SHARE’s scientific strength is based on its panel design which, through the participation of a selected sample of individuals at regular intervals, allows the grasping of the dynamic character of the ageing process. SHARE’s multi-disciplinary approach enables the depiction of the full picture of the ageing process. Rigorous procedural guidelines and programs ensure the ex-ante harmonization of research design in each country and subsequently enable a thorough comparability of data even throughout the survey’s implementation.
More at: http://www.share-project.org/

 

  • CLARIN ERIC: Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure

CLARIN ERIC is the European Infrastructure of Language Resources, Technology and Services aiming at providing easy and continuing access to the social sciences and humanities research community of digital language data (e.g. documents, recordings of oral speech, multimedia data e.t.c.), as well as, language technology tools for their processing. The CLARIN infrastructure is consisted of an electronic partnership of language data repositories, service providers, as well as high level specialization hubs with a single sign-on access for all the members of the research community at the Infrastructure’s member states. Greece is a member of CLARIN ERIC since April 2015. CLARIL EL is a national consortium coordinated by the Institute of Language and Speech Processing (ILSP http://www.ilsp.gr/)
More at: http://clarin.eu

 

  • DARIAH ERIC : Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities

DARIAH was established as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) on August 2014. DARIAH consists of the digital research infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities and aims at enhancing and supporting digitally enabled research and teaching across the arts and the humanities. It will be consisted of an interconnected network of people, information, tools and methods concerning research that will cover the broad spectrum of digital humanities. Greece is among the founding members of DARIAH. The National Coordinating Institution of the Greek infrastructure DYAS-DARIAH_GR is the Academy of Athens. (http://www.dyas-net.gr/)
France is the host country of the DARIAH-ERIC. In the near future, the infrastructure pursue to facilitate the access and use of available digital research data on the Arts and Humanities throughout Europe.
More at: https://www.dariah.eu