FSD receives funding from Academy of Finland for developing national services

FSD has been awarded funding of two million euros under the Academy of Finland’s call FIRI 2018: Infrastructures on Finland’s Roadmap. FSD will receive the funding for its project Crossing Boundaries with Tools and Services (C-BoTS). The Academy granted the funding for the period 1 January 2019 – 31 December 2023.

The project aims to react to changes in FSD’s operational environment as well as meet new partner and user needs. Promoting open science is a central objective of the project.

The project will enhance the interoperability of FSD’s services with other data-related services at the national and international levels. In addition, FSD will increase the visibility of data creators and their organisations as well as the transparency of FSD operations by, for instance, automatising reports on the use of FSD services and archived data. Statistics on FSD operations will be made easily available to client organisations and research funders.

Other goals of the project include exploring available anonymisation tools and charting the possibilities for their use at FSD. The Archive will also upgrade its tools for the management of qualitative textual datasets. The project also includes a work package that focuses on cross-national comparative research. The Signal Processing Laboratory at Tampere University will work as FSD’s partner in the project. The laboratory will provide expertise on machine learning for a work package that focuses on developing variable and study level keyword annotation tools.

The funding is based on the Research Infrastructures Roadmap of Finland. For FSD, the roadmap specifies a role as a national service resource and as a national service provider for the European infrastructure CESSDA ERIC. The now funded C-BoTs project focuses on the development of FSD’s national services.