International workshop

“Best practices in Social Science Data Archiving”

Sofia, Bulgaria 10-12 September 2004

The International workshop “Best practices in Social Science Data Archiving” was organised by Regional and Global Development Research Centre (REGLO) in Sofia on 10-12 September 2004. The workshop was integrated in the Third Session of the International Summer School organized by UNESCO and the International Social Science Council on Comparative Research In The Social Sciences: Operationalizations, which took part in Sofia from 2 to 12 September. This approach contributed additional value to the workshop and young researchers and Ph. D. students from 22 countries coming from Europe, Africa, Asia and North America attended this important event. The workshopwas the final step in the realization of UNESCO sponsored project on Establishment of Social Science Data Archive in Bulgariaand was directed by Dr. Yantsislav Yanakiev – vice-president of REGLO. The organizers of the presented the results from the two-year work on the project, the main identified problems and the prospects for archival development in Bulgaria. Among the most important achievements they identify increased researcher’s awareness of the importance to set up Social Science Data Archive and the promotion of the data sharing culture in Bulgariaas well as promotion of international co-operation and exchange of experience in social science data archiving.

The main concern of the former project director - Dr. Yanakiev is how to provide sustainability of the achieved results. In this regard he suggested some ideas such as: to establish Consortium of Data Producers and Donors; to Initiate Common Regulations for Data Access, exchange and protection in the framework of Bulgarian Sociological Association; to discuss possibilities that all public-funded surveys will be granted to the archiving; to continue international cooperation in EDAN framework, including searching for common EU funding; to make existing documented surveys on-line accessible in internet; to create courses on data archiving and opportunities for secondary data analyses and thus to help creating data sharing culture in Bulgaria.

The participants in the workshop had the privilege to have as lecturer Prof. Ekkehard Mochmann from the Central Archive for Empirical Social Surveys in Cologneon the topic “Challenges for Collaborative Working on the Evidence Base for Comparative Research”. The second lecture waspresnted by Janez Stebe from the Slovenian Data Archive who defended the thesis ”Why Do We Need our Own National Social Science Data Archive?”

The organizers of the workshop will present to the interested colleagues a monograph on “Best practices in Social Science Data Archiving”.