International digital data management and sharing initiatives

in the social sciencesPeter Elias

University of Warwick, England

Presentation to the First African Digital Curation ConferencePretoria, 12 – 13 February 2008

Why do we need to share data?

• To address research on issues of global importance:(e.g. poverty; migration; economic growth and development; spread of infectious diseases; environmental change; response to natural disasters; threats to security)

• To facilitate international research collaboration• To make best use of limited resources• To exchange skills and knowledge about the use of

research data• To engage in comparative research

Macro vs. micro data

• Macro data are aggregates of micro data (where the unit of observation is the individual, household or organisation).

• Macro data are helpful in guiding the development of research and policy (e.g. trend analysis).

• Considerable progress has been made in providing access to international macro data.

Macro data access and mapping

• UK Economic and Social Data Service International

• Web based tools for data presentation and mapping:– www.gapminder.org– www.worldmapper.org

World map – land areas

Territory size is shown proportional to surface areas of territories.

Source: www.worldmapper.org

Infant mortality 2002

Territory size shows the proportion of infant deaths worldwide that occurred there in 2002. Infant deaths are deaths of babies during their first year of life.

Source: www.worldmapper.org

Carbon emissions 2000

Tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted per person living in that territory in 2000

Source: www.worldmapper.org

Macro vs. micro data• Micro data contain more useful variation than micro

data.• Micro data are more amenable to quality

investigation and control.• Micro data are more flexible as research data – they

permit the analyst to reconstruct aggregates in different ways or to reclassify the information they contain.

• Micro data can be classified according to source:– censuses; surveys; administrative systems; transactions

What mechanisms for sharing micro data already exist?

Sharing survey data: • International Household Survey Network

Census data sharing:• Integrated Public Use Microdata Series — International (

IPUMS International)

Developing common surveys:• Demographic and Health Surveys• European Social Survey• World Values Survey• International Social Survey Programme• Longitudinal surveys of ageing (SHARE, ELSA, HRS)

Sharing archives• Council for European Social Survey Data Archives• Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research

• Need to improve knowledge about data and metadata

• Need to promote cross-disciplinary research• Need to resolve problems of access to data

deemed ‘sensitive’ or subject to ethical safeguards

• Need to gear data development to international research needs

What else needs to be done to improve data sharing?

In 2002 the US National Science Foundation and the UK Economic and Social Research Council agreed to seek ways to improve international collaboration in the social, behavioural and economic sciences

After preparatory work by the Social Science Research Council, six countries agreed to fund a major conference in Beijing (www.internationaldataforum.org)

Conference agreed to prepare plan for a new International body – the IDF

The NSF/ESRC initiative

Plans to establish the International Data Forum

• Scientific committee has met twice (representatives from 9 countries and the ISSC)

• Proposal for IDF ready by May 2008• If accepted, launch of IDF at World Social

Science Forum in May 2009

What would the IDF do?• Data discovery

Improving knowledge about existing data opportunities – worsening because of data deluge

• Data collectionWorking with research funders and research communities to identify gaps in data collection for research across national boundaries

• Data managementPromoting efforts to build standards based data and metadata management processes into the data lifecycle; introduce interoperability and make it cumulative

• Data disseminationIdentifying obstacles to data sharing, seeking to remove these and making data available to researchers

• Data re-purposingPromoting innovation in ways of re-using data