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President of GESIS visited NEPS

6/23/2012

On June 21, 2012, NEPS was pleased to welcome its guest, Prof. Dr. York Sure-Vetter, in Bamberg. Since 2009, Prof. Dr. York Sure-Vetter, who also holds a professorship for applied informatics in Coblenz, has been president of GESIS, a central Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany. With its research-based range of services and products, GESIS covers the full breadth of the research process in empirical social research.

At the beginning of his lecture, Prof. Sure-Vetter introduced his institute, whose spectrum of competencies includes the areas of survey methodology, social monitoring and social change, and data archiving, as well as specialized information and information technologies for the social sciences. Afterwards, he described the latest methods and technologies concerning the citation of research data records – a topic which is of vital importance for panel studies and data publishers like the National Educational Panel Study. Citability as a precondition and the actual citation of data sets by researchers not only supports good scientific practice but also appreciates the work of data publishers in an academic, convertible way. Furthermore, Prof. Sure-Vetter gave an overview on future potentials for research in the social sciences. These potentials will emerge from the digitalization of our social life, especially through social networking. At the end of his visit , Prof. Sure-Vetter finally also discussed specific topics like long-term storage, registration, and management of panel data with the data experts of the NEPS.