UK Data Service
| Formation | October 2012 (consolidating previous services) |
|---|---|
| Type | Government-funded research infrastructure |
| Purpose | Advancing social science research and teaching through access to data, documentation, guidance and support |
| Headquarters | University of Essex, Colchester |
|
Region served
|
UK and abroad |
|
Director
|
Prof Matthew Woollard |
| Affiliations | ESRC, UK Data Archive |
| Website | [1] |
The UK Data Service is a national data service that provides research access to a range of social and economic data collections including UK census data and government funded surveys as well as qualitative and business data.
It was established in October 2012 with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The service incorporates several previous services also established by the ESRC, including the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS), Secure Data Service, and elements of the Census Programme including Census.ac.uk.
In October 2013, the UK Data Service received additional funding to coordinate the Administrative Data Research Network (ADRN), designed to streamline research access to data routinely collected by UK government departments and other agencies. The ADRN is phase one of the ESRC Big Data Network.
UK Data Service is listed in the Registry of Research Data Repositories re3data.org.
The UK Data Service is commissioned to provide data access and support for researchers from all sectors including higher education, central and local government, foundations, charities and business. There are currently more than 6,000 datasets available from a variety of sources. Key data types include:
Access to the data catalogue, documentation and guides are available free of charge. Registration is required to download data, and its use is subject to licensing requirements specified by data owners. Most data are available under a standard End User Licence, but data are available along a spectrum ranging from 'open' to 'secure'. The latter requires specific approval and training to ensure the appropriate level of security for highly detailed and sensitive data.
The UK Data Service follows a policy of active preservation to ensure the authenticity, reliability and logical integrity of all digital resources while providing usable versions for research, teaching or learning, in perpetuity.
The UK Data Service is based around a functional model, which in turn is based on the Open Archival Information System or OAIS (an ISO standard). This means that the UK Data Service works with standards for archiving digital materials to build trust relationships: researchers must trust that archivists are giving them the ‘right’ data, and data owners and producers must trust that the archivists are not damaging the integrity of their data.
...
Wikipedia