CESSDA data catalogue: an opportunity to enhance data in social sciences

Abstract This work aims to offer an overview of the data deposited in the European archives belonging to CESSDA (the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives), by describing them and highlighting some critical issues in the metadata management that archives should address in the data ingestion procedure. The main purposes are: i) to identify the degree of quality (completeness and accuracy) of metadata and the use of controlled vocabularies; ii) to describe the features of deposited datasets; iii) to highlight the critical points in metadata compilation. To perform the analysis, the authors used metadata from all datasets collected by the national archives, retrieving them from the CESSDA Data Catalogue. The results show the degree of completeness and accuracy achieved by the archives and the use of controlled vocabularies. Metadata analysis illustrates which types of data are most frequent or simply available at the current state, highlighting the characteristics of content in terms of topics, as well as some recurring methodological features of data collection. The evaluation of the metadata quality provides indications for archives to improve the data ingestion process. The results highlight the responsibility of archives and research infrastructure in promoting the correct production of metadata and ensuring compliance with the FAIR Principles, especially in terms of findability and interoperability.