Between Dream and Deed: Access to Research Data for the Humanities and Social Sciences in The Netherlands

Peter Doorn, Director, Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), The Netherlands

DANS is the Dutch organization for providing permanent access to research data from the humanities and social sciences. DANS manages data archives and promotes the sharing of research data in fields such as sociology, political science, history, archaeology and linguistics. It also supports the access to data bases created in public and semi-public organizations such as ministries, the statistical office and the topographical service.

The Netherlands is a strong supporter of the 2004 OECD Science Ministerial’s Declaration on Access to Research Data from Public Funding, which recognizes that open access to, and unrestricted use of data promotes scientific progress and facilitates the training of researchers. The Dutch Academic organizations and universities are signatories of the 2003 "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities".

A Dutch author once wrote: “Laws and practical difficulties stand between the dream and the deed”, and this also holds true with respect to open access to research data. This paper will outline how “open” access to research data in The Netherlands really is, and what can be done to remove impediments. How does open access comply with privacy restrictions and copyright law? How to convince researchers to share the data they collected? Some solutions are technical (e.g. providing secure remote access to protected data) in character, but endorsing transparency in the jungle of unclear access regulations is also important.

Keywords: open access, data archiving, social sciences, humanities