UK Data Service

UK Data Service

Formation	October 2012 (consolidating previous services)
Type	Government-funded research infrastructure
Purpose	Advancing social science research and teaching through access to data, documentation, guidance and support
Headquarters	University of Essex, Colchester
Region served	UK and abroad
Director	Prof Matthew Woollard
Affiliations	ESRC, UK Data Archive
Website	[1]

The UK Data Service is the largest digital repository for quantitative and qualitative social science and humanities research data in the UK. This national data service integrates and builds on investments the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)^[1] has made in UK research infrastructure for over 50 years, including the UK Data Archive, Economic and Social Data Service, the Secure Data Service, Census Programme and Survey Question Bank.^[2]

The UK’s only nationally funded research infrastructure for curating and providing access to social science data, their services and expertise, especially around data curation and secure access to data, have been influential across the world. Pioneers in data curation, preservation and enabling secure, long-term access to economic, social and population data, their long-established data training programme continues to transform social science teaching, learning and research.

Through enabling long-term research access to invaluable data, the UK Data Service plays a critical part in helping build a stronger society and creating better lives for people in the UK. They add value to key national data investments by continuing to make them reusable long-term, enabling research with real impact; train researchers in highly specialist data skills, previously lacking in the UK and they enable those who teach social sciences to use real data to bring their teaching to life.

As a free service to data owners and free at the point of use to non-commercial data users, they provide long term value for money to both data owners and data users.

Rapid response to COVID-19[]

The UK Data Service enabled continued research access to data throughout the pandemic and the first COVID-19 datasets were made available in July 2020. Within six months of the pandemic they held their first online COVID-19 data dive with researchers and policy makers across the UK and beyond.

The ongoing service improvement programme since 2017 continues to review and address digital user requirements through technological enhancements alongside service and website development. They have made their learning and data resources more accessible and continue to enhance services across the organisation.

Strategic partnership since 2012[]

The most recent strategic partnership between the Universities of Essex, Manchester, Southampton, UCL, Edinburgh and Jisc since 2012 provides a comprehensive international service to meet the current and future digital needs of researchers, data users and data owners from all sectors. With this combined expertise, they frequently advise at a national and international level on data governance, ethics and confidentiality. They advised the Cabinet office on its development of the draft data ethics framework, which influenced the implementation of the Digital Economy Act 2017 and are often called upon to input into government White Papers around the use of data for research.

Their well-established data skills training provides the necessary skills and knowledge to inform research for those new to data use, with on-demand webinars, events and video tutorials around the key data types and themes, alongside detailed guidance and support to get the most out of the UK Data Service. Whilst teaching resources provide comprehensive guidance and materials to those teaching with data.

In October 2013, the UK Data Service received additional funding to coordinate the Administrative Data Research Network (ADRN), the predecessor to ADR-UK, designed to streamline research access to data routinely collected by UK government departments and other agencies.^[3][4]

UK Data Service is listed in the Registry of Research Data Repositories re3data.org.^[5]

Data access[]

The UK Data Service is commissioned to provide data access and support for researchers from all sectors including higher education, central and local government, foundations, charities and business. There are currently more than 6,000 datasets available from a variety of sources.^[6] Key data types include:^[7]

• UK Census data
• Government-funded surveys (such as Labour Force Survey and Health Survey for England)
• Longitudinal studies (such as British Household Panel Survey and Millennium Cohort Study)
• Cross-national surveys (such as European Social Survey and Eurobarometer)
• International macrodata (such as statistics from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund)
• Business microdata
• Qualitative and mixed methods data

Access to the data catalogue, documentation and guides are available free of charge. Registration may be required to download data, and its use subject to licensing requirements specified by data owners. Most data are available under a standard End User Licence, but data are available along a spectrum ranging from 'open' to 'secure'.^[8] The latter requires specific approval and training to ensure the appropriate level of security for highly detailed and sensitive data.^[9]

Data skills training and guidance[]

Their comprehensive learning resources in their Learning hub, training events and on-demand webinars relate to several innovative aspects of data-intensive social science research, alongside the foundations of research using quantitative and qualitative data. Whether new to research, new undergraduates or teachers; veteran data analysts, career researchers or data managers; there is likely to be some training or best practice guidance that will be useful.

From understanding more about how to use large national surveys, Census or qualitative data, through to the many innovations, including those in modelling, simulation, big data, web-scraping, social media and more, we continue to enable researchers to access, manage and explore data.

Experts in research data management[]

With decades of experience in all aspects of data curation, digital preservation, data access, user support and capacity building through lead partner, the UK Data Archive, makes it a strong advocate of using data for research and as part of this responsibility, has always published and shared policies, procedures and protocols to help other national and international organisations, researchers and data providers to manage research data more effectively.

They promote and maintain metadata standards for describing collections and data in the social sciences and their approach to data preparation and curation, and the standards they use, mean that data can be accessed now and in the future.

Through the UK Data Archive they continue to be at the forefront of developing international standards for data processing; for quantitative, and qualitative data processing.

Experts in data quality and replicability[]

As part of their commitment to making sure research is replicable, their work with DataCite and the British Library helps researchers and data depositors cite data correctly, thereby helping demonstrate real value and impact to the data collections they hold. They ensure data follows the FAIR principles of being Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, thereby enhancing the quality and replicability of the data. Their guidance to improve data citation across social science, along with their easy-to-use citation tool helps researchers cite data as they would other sources.

Social science research benefits from accountability and transparency, which can usefully be underpinned by high quality and trustworthy data. Rigorous data curation practices are still sometimes viewed as a dark art, and easy-to-use tools to correct and clean numeric data are not widely used, despite awareness of the desire to make data FAIR. Their innovative, open source QAMyData tool provides a health check for numeric data and helps repository staff check, clean and document data.

Digital preservation and archiving[]

The UK Data Service follows a policy of active preservation to ensure the authenticity, reliability and logical integrity of all digital resources while providing usable versions for research, teaching or learning, in perpetuity.^[10]

The UK Data Service is based around a functional model, which in turn is based on the Open Archival Information System or OAIS (an ISO standard). This means that the UK Data Service works with standards for archiving digital materials to build trust relationships: researchers must trust that archivists are giving them the ‘right’ data, and data owners and producers must trust that the archivists are not damaging the integrity of their data.^[11]

The UK Data Service adheres to the UK Data Archive Preservation Policy, which codifies long-standing archival practice standards. This policy conforms to the OAIS reference model, with additions and alterations specific to the materials held within the UK Data Service collection. The policy holds strict requirements for digital preservation activities, together with how these requirements can best be achieved in keeping with regulatory requirements, archival best practice, information security and funding constraints.

Data sharing and reuse[]

The UK Data Service encourages data sharing and reuse as a means to extend the inherent value in primary data for replicating research results as well as for additional analysis and teaching use.^[12] To this end, it supports the ESRC's Research Data Policy, which requires researchers funded by the research council to commit to a structured data management plan to enable data produced in the course of research to be deposited and archived for future sharing and reuse.^[13] To support researchers in developing robust data management plans, the UK Data Service makes a toolkit of resources available in formats designed for researchers as well as those responsible for teaching data management skills.

Experts in safe research using controlled data[]

Information security is at the heart of the UK Data Service and flows through everything they do. Lead partner, the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex, was the first university to be awarded ISO27001 certification, an international standard of information security. Working closely with HMRC DataLab and the Office for National Statistics Secure Research Services, they developed safe research protocols including the Five Safes Framework to enable secure research access to data while protecting confidentiality.

Accredited in 2020 by the UK Statistic Authority under the Digital Economy Act 2017, they continue to provide a more streamlined pathway for researchers to securely access controlled data they need for research.

UK Data Service partners have a long history of contributing to best practice in trustworthy repositories. Also in 2020, they helped to develop CoreTrustSeal, which sets out international requirements for trusted data repositories. This demonstrates their expertise to perform all of the relevant activities relating to providing long-term access to data of value to social science researchers.

They also advised on the creation of the SafePod Network (SPN) launched in 2021 that enables wider geographical research access to sensitive data.

Structure and governance[]

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in its current form established the UK Data Service in October 2012, after originally setting up and funding the organisation in earlier forms since 1967.

The UK Data Service lead partner is based at the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex and delivered by host organisations across the UK: Jisc and the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research at the University of Manchester; School of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Southampton, EDINA, at the University of Edinburgh, and two departments at University College London: Department of Information Studies and Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis.^[14]

The governance structure is managed by the ESRC^[15]

Additional funding from other UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) councils includes the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) that enables specific projects such as the Smart Energy Research Lab (SERL), and European based projects and investments such as the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) and Synergies for Europe’s Research Infrastructure in the Social Sciences (SERISS).

Advisory committee[]

Following the establishment of UKRI in 2018, the new national body that brought together all UK Research Councils, Innovate UK and Research England, the strategic oversight and provision to the ESRC of independent assurance for the UK Data Service has been undergoing change.

A new advisory committee for the UK Data Service was established in 2019 and meets twice a year. The advisory committee for the UK Data Service is the independent body with responsibility to ensure that the investment is developed, managed and maintained in a manner that maximises its benefit as a long-term scientific resource of importance both nationally and internationally. As an independent body, advisory committee members act as critical friends in relation to the overall shape, academic direction and relevance to policy and practice of the UK Data Service, advising on its general strategy in order for it to achieve its overall objectives. Scientific and/methodological advice may also be sought from external, independent sources.

Host organisations[]

UK Data Archive, University of Essex[]

Lead partner of the UK Data Service, the UK Data Archive is curator of the largest collection of digital social science data in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1967, the Archive is an acknowledged centre of expertise in the areas of acquiring, curating and providing access to data. In 2010 it became the first academic department in a UK university to earn ISO27001 certification, an international standard of information security. And in 2020 was accredited to continue to provide controlled access to secure research data, under the Digital Economy Act 2017. In 2020 it also gained international certification from CoreTrustSeal as a trusted digital repository.

Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research, University of Manchester[]

The Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research (CMI) is a centre of research excellence specialising in the application of advanced quantitative methods in an interdisciplinary social science context. Named after Cathie Marsh who founded the Census Microdata Unit in 1993, CMI still plays a key role in the support and development of UK secondary microdata including the Sample of Anonymised Records (SARs) from the Census.

Jisc, UK[]

Jisc is a registered charity and champions the use of digital technologies in UK education and research. As part of the Digital Resources Directorate of Jisc, UK Data Service staff provide access to, and specialist support for, the databanks of Inter-governmental organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and OECD as well as aggregate statistics from the 1971 to 2011 UK censuses.

Geography and Environment, University of Southampton[]

The Population, Health and Wellbeing research group in Geography and Environment at the University of Southampton has an outstanding reputation for leadership in population and health research, based on the combination of innovation in methodology covering geographical information systems (GIS), spatial analysis and quantitative and qualitative methods with substantive expertise in census, population and health issues. Our work comprises spatial population analysis and modelling; cultures, spaces and practices of care and population health. Our members work closely with the Office for National Statistics, co-direct the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods and UK Data Service and edit the journal Health and Place.

EDINA, University of Edinburgh[]

EDINA is a national academic data centre operating since 1995. It is designated by Jisc to support the activities of universities, colleges and research institutes across the UK and has a mission to develop and deliver shared services and infrastructure for research and education that are innovative, high quality and cost-effective, based on knowledge and expertise gained through research and development. EDINA also continues to act as the ESRC specialist geography unit for the census, supporting UK Data Service users in accessing and using the geography outputs of the 2011 and previous censuses.

Department of Information Studies, University College London[]

The UCL Department of Information Studies is an international centre for knowledge creation and transfer in the fields of librarianship, archives and records management, publishing, information science and digital humanities. The department brings together academics and practitioners in these fields, with research aiming to develop the understanding and insights needed to shape the emerging information environment, while elucidating and building on the historical developments that have created this environment.

Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London[]

The UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) is one of the leading forces in the science of cities, generating new knowledge and insights for use in city planning, policy and design and drawing on the latest geospatial methods and ideas in computer-based visualisation and modelling. CASA is part of The Bartlett, UCL’s global faculty of the built environment.

The future needs of research and researchers across the UK[]

Long-term research access to important data resources to support wider society is just as relevant and important now as it was in 1967 when the foundations of what became the UK Data Service, first began. The UK Data Service supports the provision of a research and innovation system across the UK that is equipped to tackle current and future economic, social and population challenges which is even more significant as society looks towards recovery from COVID-19.

Their emphasis is to draw together evidence about the impactful reach and significance of the use of the data and resources they provide, of the Service as a whole, and on understanding the beneficial effect. They continue to demonstrate the contribution the Service, its data and resources make to the economy, society, culture, public policy and services, health, the environment and quality of life.

References[]

External links[]

• UK Data Service
• Census Support
• Discover - catalogue of data and resources
• Variable and Question Bank
• Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
• UK Data Archive