1. Enabling direct data access to social science research data
within the GESIS Data Catalogue DBK
Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen
DI4R Digital Infrastructures for Research 2016
28-30 September, Krakow, Poland

2. The Data Catalogue DBK Social science research data
Surveys and survey programmes
Time series
Comparative studies
Broad range of topics covered
DBK at the GESIS Data Archive
Contains study descriptions of primary data from survey research and historical time series
Has more than 5100 studies, e.g. ALLBUS, ISSP, Eurobarometer, Politbarometer, DeutschlandTrend, European Values Study, German Longitudinal Election Study, Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, Youth Studies and many more…
Uses a generic metadata schema for the description of social science data
Was developed since the 1960ies, together with international archives and the DDI Alliance
Provides metadata management to publish it in different retrieval and distribution platforms
Includes a version history for the datasets, including errata documentation and persistent identifiers (DOIs by da|ra)

3. Metadata access possibilities
OAI-PMH provides Dublin Core, DDI-C/L, DCAT
Metadata for discovery
Web UI
API via OAI-PMH available,
but no data API.

4. Current data access possibilities
Users download or order data
needs for more diverse data formats
interdisciplinary analysis methods
linking data from different sources
data which are rapidly changing
Currently internal project to convert data automatically
Based on ascii, csv data + definitions
Rectangular data files from 100kB to 221MB, mean 12 MB (43.4GB in total)
Columns=Variables.
Rows=Cases.
(datorium: single twitter dataset 7.8GB)
But this still requires a download from the users

5. The Data Tank Open source data API diverse input formats
diverse output formats via API
XML, HTML, JSON, or CSV
Supports semantic technologies
DCAT-AP metadata
Apache, MySQL, PHP stack
To provide an API for the users
Established standards should be used
RESTful services
No data duplication should be needed
by Open Knowledge Belgium

6. Installation and integration
Installation issues due to Windows (WAMP)
- Using different ports, since iis+mysql already on server running
PHP extension under Windows not supported (ext-pcntl)
Dbase extensions not working
Caching module (memcached) not available, used file cache instead
Data issues due to CSV format
Tab delimiter not supported
Double quote text qualifier not supported
Design with „Collection“ and „URI“ for datasets has to be defined
WAMP Server
Using data from DBK
Existing CSV datasets
Define Collection & URI
Map some metadata

7. Challenges and problems
Research Workflow
Access restrictions by dataset
Versioning
Usage stats needed
Performance
Selecting variables (paging by columns)
Research question
Find data
Analyze data
Social science data
Privacy concerns even after anonymization
Archive creates updates, versions for the dataset – API structure
Archive needs statistics about usage
Data API must be reliable and quick
Rectangular dataset is never used completely, variable selection seems necessary

8. Future Thank you! User has a personal space at DBK
personal data access possibilities
personal statistics
could also be used for uploading resulting datasets by users to enable preservation, citation, and sharing
Thank you!
After solving all the issues
Researchers may have direct access to data via API
Organized by a „personal space“ at DBK
Can show also statistics for users
Thank you very much!
Contact: