In Brief

» National Archives to Retire Electronic Archiving System
» Language Bank to Become Second Archive in Finland to Obtain DSA Certification
» Finnish National Election Study 2015 Results Compiled
» ISSP 2013 National Identity III Survey Data Available at GESIS
» UK Data Service's ReShare and ICPSR's OpenICPSR Receive Scientific Data Approval

National Archives to Retire Electronic Archiving System

Following a decision by the Ministry of Education and Culture, the National Archives of Finland will be running down its electronic VAPA system in 2015. The system is designed for receiving and archiving e-data submitted by the state administration. It will be replaced by a national digital library and its long-term preservation system (KDK/PAS), an initiative of the Ministry of Education and Culture. As the system is not yet compatible with other government systems, the National Archives cannot accept public e-documents for archiving or provide related data services at present.

A report by the National Archives Service of Finland on the impact of the decision on its statutory operations will be drawn up by mid-October, and the authorities instructed accordingly.

The National Archives Service has already raised concerns about the running down of the VAPA system, and the resulting, rather exceptional situation in which it will not be able to receive data produced by state administration for long-term storage, or provide related data services as done, for example, in other Nordic countries.

Language Bank to Become Second Archive in Finland to Obtain DSA Certification

The Language Bank of Finland has received the esteemed Data Seal of Approval (DSA) certificate. The DSA can be awarded to a trusted data archive whose practices in research data handling have been found to be sound and transparent. Previously, the FSD was the only DSA-certified archive in Finland.

The basic principle of DSA is that data created and used by scientists should be managed, curated and archived in an orderly manner so that it can be reused as efficiently as possible.

The Language Bank of Finland is a language research service at CSC – the IT Center for Science coordinated by the national FIN-CLARIN consortium, through which researchers can access research data, applications and other resources.

More information:
» Language Bank website

Finnish National Election Study 2015 Results Compiled

Finnish National Election Study 2015 is an extensive Finnish survey conducted following the parliamentary elections in spring. The project was coordinated by Åbo Akademi University with Kimmo Grönlund from Åbo Akademi University and Elina Kestilä-Kekkonen from the University of Tampere as the researchers responsible.

The data will be available at the FSD in mid-2016 following the publication of the main report, which is to be edited by Kimmo Grönlund and Hanna Wass (University of Helsinki).

The dataset includes the Finnish data of the international Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES Module 4).

More information:
» CSES website

ISSP 2013 National Identity III Survey Data Available at GESIS

Datasets for the international ISSP 2013 survey are now available for download from the German GESIS data service. ISSP 2013 was conducted in 33 countries around the world and charted an array of issues related to national identity. In Finland, the 1243 respondents were asked about their home town, country and national identity, about the pride they feel regarding their fellow countrymen's achievements in the sciences, art and sports, and about their attitudes towards, for example, minorities, immigrants and large international corporations. The questions were partly the same as in the 1995 and 2003 ISSP surveys.

The ISSP (International Social Survey Programme) is a continuing annual programme of cross-national collaboration on surveys covering topics of importance to social science research. FSD is a member of the ISSP.

More information:
» Data in downloadable format in GESIS data catalogue
» Dataset-related documents
» Information about the data
» ISSP website

UK Data Service's ReShare and ICPSR's OpenICPSR Receive Scientific Data Approval

The online publication Scientific Data has added the UK Data Service's ReShare and the ICPSR's OpenICPSR to its short list of approved data resources in social research. For researchers, these web resources offer a possibility to store and disseminate their research data almost as is.

Scientific Data is an open-access, peer-reviewed publication for descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets. The aim of the magazine and its articles is to promote wider data sharing and reuse rather than to test hypotheses or conduct in-depth analyses. The magazine is published by the Nature Publishing Group.

All data on which the articles published in Scientific Data are based must be public, but the magazine itself does not accept or deposit data. Instead, it requires that the said data are deposited in one or more commonly recognised repositories approved by the magazine.

More information:
» UK Data Service's ReShare
» OpenICPSR
» Online publication Scientific Data

Creative Commons -license