Data Archiving and Networked Services

DANS is the Dutch national centre of expertise and repository for research data. DANS helps researchers make their data available for reuse. This allows researchers to use the data for new research and makes published research verifiable and reproducible. With more than 200,000 datasets and a staff of 60, DANS is one of the leading repositories in Europe.

The use of FAIR data improves the verifiability and reproducibility of research. It also enhances efficiency because working on datasets is expensive. What is more, linking data can lead to new discoveries and insights. Reusing and connecting data accelerates knowledge circulation and increases our ability to solve complex issues. In short, making better use of data leads to better science, which matters to society.

DANS is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). As part of its mission, DANS supports the open data principle, while being aware of the fact that not all data can be freely available and without limitations at all times. Even so, it is important that research data that is not available (yet) or only available to a limited degree isarchived in a sustained manner. Therefore, DANS applies the principle ‘Open if possible, protected if necessary’.

To ensure that archived data can still be found, accessed and used in the future, DANS took part in the development of the CoreTrustSeal for data repository certification. This data seal can be requested and granted to data repositories that meet a number of clear criteria in the field of quality, preservation and accessibility of data.

DANS gives Training in Research Data Management, for researchers, data professionals, research institutions, research funders and repository managers.

DANS encourages scientific researchers to archive and reuse data in a sustained form via the archiving system EASY. EASY offers access to over 200,000 datasets in the Humanities, e.g. History and Archaeology, Social and behavioural sciences, and Geospatial sciences. Data and documentation files are available for downloading free of charge for registered users.

Moreover, DANS provides access to thousands of scientific datasets and other research information through NARCIS. NARCIS is a national portal focussing on scientific information and descriptions of research projects, experts, and research institutes in the Netherlands. Among others, NARCIS gives access to 2.4 million publications (of which are 1 million open access), 359,000 datasets, and descriptions of 74,000 research projects. Sources are all Dutch universities, the Academy (KNAW), the national research funder NWO, and other research institutes.

EASY is an online archiving system for depositing and downloading research data. Among others, it contains datasets from the following disciplines: Humanities, Health Sciences, Social and Behavioural sciences, Oral History and Spatial Sciences. Users can search by keywords in the archive, a ‘Search help’ is available. It is possible to use advanced search with a search guidance by fields, or browse in the different disciplines or collections.

In the national portal NARCIS the user can search by keywords, a ‘Search help’ is available. It’s possible to filter the results by different facets, depending on the information type (publications, datasets, experts, research projects, or institutions).