CESSDA - Council of European Social Science Data Archives

CESSDA (Council of European Social Science Data Archives) is an informal combination of the West European data archives with the aim of a free and intensive exchange of data. The combination of archives was formed in June of 1976 by the then existing European data archives. The President is at present Kevin Schürer from the UK Data Archive in Colchester, Essex (UKDA). The secretariat of CESSDA is held by Hans Jørgen Marker from the Danish Data archives (DDA) in Odense.

Joint work by the data archives

CESSDA has initiated an intensive exchange of experience between the Western European data archives, including the exchange of experts, in which the archives have to some extent differing areas. Data archives found themselves in a special position, in which many highly specialised institutes find themselves; they can rely on no, or on only a few, tried and tested work instruments. They lacked computer programmes for, for example, data cleaning or data storage, as well as information retrieval which must to a large extent be developed in-house.

This situation has drastically improved through system development and international standards, partly supported by different framework programme projects of the EC.

Archive agreement concerning international data transfer

The value of this arrangement for the individual researcher in Germany is that access to the data from all of the West European archives which hold computer-readable data is possible through GESIS-ZA. The rules governing this data exchange are specified in the CESSDA Data Transfer Agreement:

It was agreed that a particular archive can order a dataset from a foreign CESSDA archive on behalf of a national user, under the access conditions which hold for that dataset.
In cases where the national user obtains a dataset directly from the foreign archive, it was agreed that:
- a copy of the correspondence with the user will be sent to the "national" archive, and that;
- on request, a copy of the dataset will be send to the "national" archive of the user.
The "national" data archive of the user will inform the archive supplying the data of any subsequent usage of the data.
Data sets will not be distributed to another third party who is not a CESSDA partner without prior consultation with the archive supplying the data.
For further distribution, the scale of charges of the archive supplying the user with the data shall be enforced.

The CESSDA agreement is continuously updated and adjusted to new access technologies with due consideration given by terms of administrative and data privacy regulations.