Data dissemination, documentation, and user support

Abstract

A major goal of the NEPS is to provide scientific use data to the international research community. For this purpose, the NEPS has set up a Research Data Center (RDC) that offers a comprehensive portfolio of services, allowing researchers to gain access to and work with NEPS data effectively. The RDC’s support concept combines well-known approaches with innovative means of data documentation, data dissemination, and user support. Important building blocks of our dissemination strategy include the provision of (a) user-friendly and edited scientific use data, (b) flexible data access to the scientific community, (c) sufficient, easy-to-obtain, and clearly arranged documentation of NEPS surveys and data, and (d) extensive user support fostering good scientific practices and high-quality educational research. To achieve the highest standards in publishing panel data, the RDC has established a powerful infrastructure for data management, data dissemination, data documentation, and user support. In this chapter, we discuss the core elements of our concept.