GESIS has revised and updated its access categories and terms of use for research data. The changes affect, among other things, the use of cloud services, AI services, commercial use, and use by students. The changes to the terms of use and access categories were motivated by the fact that some of the previous regulations were several decades old and no longer corresponded to the actual services provided.
The changes have standardized several access regimes at GESIS, enabling our institute to offer users and data providers greater ease of use in the future. The access categories will also function more as protection categories. When classifying research data into these categories, the corresponding protection requirements will then be considered to a greater extent. The range of services offered by the Secure Data Center, our Trusted Research Environment, for highly sensitive data will be expanded and the access categories for this will be further refined.
Significant changes to the terms of use concern "scientific use," which replaces "academic research and teaching" in the old terms and simplifies access to data for researchers outside of universities. Commercial use, i.e., use for profit, is permitted for a specific portion of our data in an open access class. However, commercial use is still not permitted for most of the data, especially those with access restrictions. On the other hand, advanced students who have the necessary expertise can now use such restricted-access data upon request with the support of their supervisors. Finally, all research data provided by GESIS will only be accessible after registration in the future. As a publicly funded institution, GESIS can only offer free services to the social science community if it can demonstrate that the data hosted here is being used appropriately.
The widespread use of cloud services, especially for storing data and documents, is now more strictly regulated. In the future, users will be required to encrypt data downloaded from GESIS in the cloud, provided that the terms of use permit this. This is primarily due to the fact that data of any kind that can be accessed without restriction is used to an almost uncontrollable extent for purposes such as training of AI systems (as recently done by Meta and LinkedIn, among others). For this reason, the use of AI systems is also very restricted, and the use of online generative AI systems is expressly prohibited. Uploads of data to services like ChatGPT are considered transfers of that data to third parties, which poses high risks for research subjects. The training of AI systems using data harvested online is another reason why data will no longer be made accessible without registration in the future.
The new terms of use and access categories that have now been published will be implemented gradually over the coming months. We will provide regular updates on this and publish more detailed explanations, for example in the form of FAQs on our website. Business customers and data providers will be informed separately, as the changes to the access categories and terms of use will also entail changes to the service agreements with GESIS. For most users and data providers, little will change except that terminology has been adjusted and usage rights have been defined more precisely. We plan to have all changes and transitions completed by the end of 2026 and are striving to make the transition to the new unified access regime as easy and user-friendly as possible for all parties involved. If you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback, please do not hesitate to contact us at any time.
You can find the new terms of use and access categories here.