Dissemination and preservation

Construction of data dissemination and archiving platforms

As an expert in the building of data dissemination and archiving platforms, CDSP has undertaken many projects of this kind. As far back as 2006, it established one of the first Nesstar software suites for quantitative data in France. Other developments followed: the Quetelet-PROGEDO questions suite (2011), the beQuali qualitative data valorisation platform (2016), the ArchiPolis catalogue, France’s first Dataverse data storage and management system (2017), the Colectica questions databank (2020) and the data.sciencespo.fr data repository (2020).

All these platforms have been set up to provide users with a broad range of functions, as well as to store the data and optimise their online referencing system.

Data repository management

The data.sciencespo.fr data warehouse is jointly hosted by CDSP and the Sciences Po Information Systems Directorate, which work together to provide a dissemination service that reflects the imperatives for research data and to minimise the downtimes that are inevitable with an infrastructure like this. The engineers in the Information Systems Directorate are notably responsible for backups, monitoring the service, restoring service in the event of a failure, and upgrades to the Dataverse application. For their part, CDSP’s engineers maintain a technology watch, as already mentioned, and are in charge of infrastructure management.

Metadata exchange protocols

The data.sciencespo.fr data repository was designed to make data available under the international OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) protocol. This gives the surveys greater visibility, since the metadata are explored by multiple platforms.

For example, CDSP’s metadata are harvested by several leading French and international platforms with which the centre collaborates to maintain this referencing. These platforms include: the CESSDA Data Catalogue, ISIDORE, OpenAire.

Technology watch linked with digital repositories

CDSP’s engineers maintain a watch on the open-source Dataverse platform that underpins the data.sciencespo.fr data repository, in accordance with the TRUST (Transparency, Responsibility, User Community, and Sustainability, and Technology) principles set out in Lin, D., Crabtree, J., Dillo, I. et al. The TRUST Principles for digital repositories. Sci Data 7, 144 (2020). (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0486-7).

Identifying data

CDSP has expertise in managing permanent identifiers, notably DOI (Digital Object Identifiers). The datasets disseminated by the centre all have a permanent identifier of this kind. This is an essential piece of information that guarantees that datasets can be found, reused and accurately cited over the long-term.

File formats and names

CDSP disseminates data files in formats commonly used by the secondary user community (e.g. SAS, SPSS,

STATA, CSV in the case of quantitative surveys). In addition, a free format is always offered in order to ensure that the surveys are preserved.

When these files are disseminated, CDSP’s engineers provide supplementary metadata on data.sciencespo.fr that quickly tell the user what type of documents they are (in the form of a label, e.g.: Data, Report...).

When it comes to the naming of files, CDSP follow the national and international guidelines, in particular the recommendations given by INIST (Institute of Scientific and Technical Information) and the CNRS and Stanford library guidelines.