New Horizon 2020 project begins

The European Social Survey (ESS) has begun working on a new Horizon 2020 project, the Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud (SSHOC).

Funded by the European Commission, the project aims to create an open platform where data, tools and training are available and accessible for users of social sciences and humanities (SSH) data.

The €14.5m project, which runs to April 2022, will provide a significant contribution towards achieving the vision put forward by the European Cloud Initiative, established by the European Commission in 2016.

SSHOC will ensure that SSH expertise and the particular requirements of SSH data, including multi-linguality and sensitive and confidential data, are integrated seamlessly into the European Open Science Cloud.

The project aims to normalise data sharing and re-use by applying the FAIR principles to social sciences and humanities data.

It will develop, realise and maintain user-friendly tools and services, covering all aspects of the research data cycle, creating interdisciplinary links between people, data, services and training and increasing the potential for societal impact.

The ESS will lead on work package 4 of the project – Innovations in Data Production – which will realise a number of initiatives associated with the creation of data.

It aims to develop a sample management system which meets the needs of high-quality cross-national probability-based online panels.

The work package will also explore innovations in Computer Assisted Translation and Computer Assisted Recorded Interviewing.

It will also develop and implement a social policy application program interface (API) to be embedded in social surveys to efficiently collect accurate policy-relevant information.

The ESS is one of 19 organisations involved in the project, alongside all six partners involved in the Synergies for Europe’s Research Infrastructures in the Social Sciences (SERISS) project.

These are Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) – the coordinator of SSHOC – European Values Study (Tilburg University); Generations & Gender Programme (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences – KNAW); Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE); and WageIndicator (University of Amsterdam).

Other partners involved are: Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER); CentERdata; European Research Infrastructure for Language Resources and Technology (CLARIN); Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS); German Archaeological Institute; Italian National Research Council (CNR); Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH); SciencesPo; Semantic Web Company; TRUST-IT; University College London and University of Nottingham.