SOFIS - Social Science Research Information System

SOFIS offers information on theoretical and empirical research projects in the following disciplines:

Subject coverage

as well as from further interdisciplinary areas of the social sciences, such as, for example, research on women, research on leisure, gerontology, social welfare, criminology (see also social science classification).

Contents and updates

SOFIS contains descriptions of planned, on-going and completed (in the last 10 years) research projects from the Federal Republic of Germany, from Austria and Switzerland (approximately 43,000 records in January 2005).
A portion of SOFIS, namely project descriptions from recent years, can be searched directly via a special search form. The comprehensive collection of the SOFIS database, comprising the last ten years, is accessible via the hosts STN International and GBI as well as GBI wiso-net (by subscription to universities).

Around 6,000 records per year are added to or updated in the current version of the database. The proportion of new project references is high: approximately two-thirds of the projects are, at the moment of data entry, still in progress; the remaining third have just been finished. Project descriptions are often already in the database and searchable at a point before any results based on the work have been published. SOFIS is therefore an instrument through which one can get information on the most current research activities, and can identify developments and trends in the social sciences.

Information Sources

Project information in SOFIS comes primarily from the higher education sector. Research from the non-university sector is included only insofar as the results from that research may be published in the open literature and not - as is so often the case with market and opinion research - designed only for the commissioning agency.
Substantial sources of information are surveys at institutions doing social science research. In the Federal Republic of Germany the survey is carried out by the Social Science Information Centre, in Austria till 2001 by the University Library of Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, and in Switzerland by SIDOS (Swiss Information and Data Archive Service for the Social Sciences). The results of the GESIS-IZ survey are extended by social science information from specialised documentation institutions, such as, for example, the Institute for Employment Research of the Federal Employment Services (IAB) or the Federal Environmental Agency, with both of whom the GESIS-IZ has negotiated a cooperation agreement  (cooperating partners in database development). Further extensions result from the evaluation of internet sources, higher education reports as well as annual reports of central funding sources and foundations.

Example of a project description

© GESIS Monika Zimmer 2007-12-28