About.
Profile
The Research Data Centre (RDC) Qualiservice was accredited by the German Data Forum (RatSWD) in 2019, and archives qualitative social science research data from all disciplines in order to make them available for scientific reuse. Our portfolio covers the entire range of qualitative social science research data types: In addition to interview transcripts, this includes (in particular) ethnographic material such as field notes and observation protocols, mixed-methods data, image and sound material as well as audiovisual data.
Our services are secure, flexible and research-oriented. They include personal and project-specific advice, the curation and preparation of your data for long-term archiving and subsequent usage, as well as the provision of archived research data and relevant contextual information. Internationally interoperable metadata warrant the findability of recorded datasets. Persistent identifiers (DOI) ensure the long-term citability of research data and study contexts.
In the framework of our partnerships with several specialized information services for social and cultural anthropology (FID SKA), sociology (FID SocioHub) and political sciences (FID Pollux) as well as the data portal for racism and right-wing extremism research (DP-R|EX), we are continuously expanding our portfolio. In the future, we will also be archiving expert interviews and documents.
The history of Qualiservice
- Since 2023, Qualiservice is a partner in the Sociology Information Service (FID SocioHub), which is jointly managed by the University and State Library of Cologne (USB) and GESIS. As part of the FID, Qualiservice's portfolio will be expanded to include group discussions and focus groups, and the distributed archiving of mixed methods studies developed jointly with GESIS will be made more user-friendly.
- Since 2023, Qualiservice is a partner in the Specialized Information Service for Political Sciences (FID Pollux), which is jointly managed by the Bremen State and University Library (SuUB) and GESIS. Workflows for the preparation and archiving of expert interviews and documents are developed as part of the FID.
- Since 2022, Qualiservice has become a partner in the development of a new BMBF-funded data portal for racism and right-wing extremism research (DP-RIEX). In addition to Qualiservice, the Research Data Centre of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM.fdz) and the Social Media Observatory (SMO) at the Hans-Bredow-Institute (HBI) are involved in the joint project. As part of the project, a topic-specific data infrastructure will be established specifically for research into racism and right-wing extremism (RIEX).
- Since January 2021, Qualiservice coordinates the development of a network for qualitative research data (QualidataNet) as part of the Consortium for Social, Behavioral, Educational. and Economic Data (KonsortSWD), funded as part of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI).
- In June 2019, Qualiservice was accredited as a scientific research data centre by the German Council for Social and Economic Data (now KonsortSWD). The RatSWD Monitoring Commission monitors the quality of all accredited RDC's.
- Since February 2019, Qualiservice is involved in the DFG-funded Specialized Information Service for Social and Cultural Anthropology (FID SKA) which is run jointly with the Humboldt University Library in Berlin. In this framework, our services are being expanded to include ethnographic data, such as observation protocols, field notes and diaries as well as audio and video data.
- Since 2019, Qualiservice has been working with 10 other partners on the creation of domain data protocols (DDPs) - publicly reference able sample protocols that are intended to facilitate the data-specific organization of research data in empirical educational research. The DDP-Bildung project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
- Since 2018, the DFG has been funding the implementation of the RDC as a nationwide research data centre for thematically unrelated qualitative social science data.
- In 2015, Betina Hollstein, professor of Qualitative Methods and Microsociology at the University of Bremen, took over the management of Qualiservice and integrated the RDC into the SOCIUM Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy.
- From 2011 to 2014, Qualiservice funded by the DFG, developed workflows for the archiving and provision of qualitative social science data in close cooperation with the scientific community.
- From 2003 to 2005, together with the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, the ALLF carried out a DFG-funded feasibility study which investigated the supply and demand side for a data service centre for qualitative interview data (Medjedocvic 2001, Opitz & Mauer 2005) and forms the conceptual basis for Qualiservice (Medjedocvic & Witzel 2010).
- Qualiservice is the successor to the former Archive for Life Course Research (ALLF), which had emerged from the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center 186, Status Passages and Risks in the Life Course, at the University of Bremen.
Consortium Partners and Workgroups
SOCIUM – Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy, University of Bremen
The Qualiservice operational office is situated at the SOCIUM and coordinates from here all services including advice and support for research projects, transfers of data and delivery, data usage agreements, exchange with the scientific community, as well as cooperation with national and international partner institutions. The Safe Center, in which the research data and materials are curated under secure conditions – including anonymization scrutiny – is also located at the SOCIUM. Guest workstations within a protected environment allow external researchers to work with less anonymized data on the basis of a specific user agreement. The operational office also ensures that legal regulations and ethical considerations with regard to data archiving and secondary use are implemented at Qualiservice.
PANGAEA – Certified World Data Center
Since 1993, PANGAEA has been archiving and publishing research data and shaped the worldwide development of research data infrastructures within various international collaborations. With origins in environmental and climate research, PANGAEA now works in an interdisciplinary manner and is continuously expanding its workflows. In order to enable storage and provision of sensitive qualitative data from the social sciences, PANGAEA has adapted its longstanding and approved workflows. PANGAEA is a member of the International Council for Science World Data System (ICSU-WDS) as well as a certified and accredited World Data Center (WDC). PANGAEA provides metadata for various international metadata schemes which are harvested by various online platforms. The interoperability of the archived datasets also allows for "cross-linking" between literature and research data. For example, the SCHOLIX service, which was developed with significant contributions by PANGAEA, enables publishers to provide links to reference research data relating to scientific journal articles.
State and University Library Bremen (SuUB)
The State and University Library Bremen (SuUB) contributes to Qualiservice with its expertise in creating and developing specialized metadata in order to describe qualitative research data (Betancort-Cabrera & Haake 2014). Moreover, the SuUB publishes the Qualiservice study reports, which provide contextual information on archived research data.
Team
SOCIUM - Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy
Prof. Dr. Betina Hollstein (Scientific Head of Qualiservice)
e-mail: betina.hollstein(at)uni-bremen.de
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Martin Bacher (Administrative Head of Qualiservice)
Telefon: +49 421 218 58624
e-Mail: martin.bacher(at)uni-bremen.de
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Patricia Tegeler-Winde
Secretary of Prof. Dr. Hollstein
phone: +49 421 218-58638
e-mail: p.tegeler-winde(at)uni-bremen.de
Mareike Sauer
Administration
phone: +49 421 218-58559
e-mail: mareike.sauer(at)uni-bremen.de
Linda Schuckmann
Administration
phone: +49 421 218-58562
e-mail: linda.schuckmann(at)uni-bremen.de
Dr. Kati Mozygemba
phone: +49 421 218-57052
e-mail: k.mozygemba(at)uni-bremen.de
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Dr. Susanna Prepeliczay
Scientific Information Service Sociology (Socio Hub) (provisional)
Coordination of Curation Department
phone: +49 421 218 57053
e-mail: s.prepeliczay(at)uni-bremen.de
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Dr. Michaela Rizzolli
Scientific Information Service Social and Cultural Anthropology (FID SKA)
Emphasis on ethnographic material
phone: +49 421 218-57085
e-mail: michaela.rizzolli(at)uni-bremen.de
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Paula Lein
Scientific Information Service Political Science (FID Pollux)
e-mail: paula.lein(at)uni-bremen.de
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Theresa Manderscheid
Data portal for racism and right-wing extremism (DP-R|EX)
phone: +49 421 218-58516
e-mail: theresa.manderscheid(at)uni-bremen.de
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Christof Wittmaack
phone: +49 421 218-57059
e-mail: wittmaack(at)uni-bremen.de
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Monika Leichtling
phone: +49 421 218-58616
e-mail: m.leichtling(at)uni-bremen.de
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Karolin Meyer
phone: +49 421 218-58529
e-mail: ka_me(at)uni-bremen.de
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Dr. Sebastian Schlerka
phone: +49 421 218-58533
e-mail: sebastian.schlerka(at)uni-bremen.de
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Egor Gordeev
phone: +49 421 218-65756
e-mail: egordeev(at)uni-bremen.de
Hai Ha Nguyen
phone: +49 421 218-58528
e-mail: haiha.nguyen(at)uni-bremen.de
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Student employees
Robert Köster
e-mail: s_bjrazy(at)uni-bremen.de
Lukas Vieluf
e-mail: lvieluf(at)uni-bremen.de
Sarah Heider
e-mail: sheider(at)uni-bremen.de
Eileen Grau
e-mail: egrau(at)uni-bremen.de
PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science
Prof. Dr. Frank Oliver Glöckner (Head of PANGAEA)
phone: +49 421 218-65592
e-mail: management(at)pangaea.de
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Dr. Tom Nicolai
E-Mail: tnicolai(at)marum.de
Uwe Schindler
phone: +49 421 218-65595
e-mail: uschindler(at)pangaea.de
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Egor Gordeev
Telefon: +49 421 218-65756
E-Mail: egordeev(at)uni-bremen.de
State and University Library Bremen (SuUB)
Maria Elisabeth Müller (Director of SuUB)
phone: +49 421 218-59400
e-mail: direktion(at)suub.uni-bremen.de
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Noemi Betancort
phone: +49 421 218-59592
e-mail: noemi.betancort(at)suub.uni-bremen.de
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Dr. Martin Blenkle
phone: +49 421 218-59410
e-mail: blenkle(at)suub.uni-bremen.de
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Specialised Information Service Social and Cultural Anthropology (FID SKA) at the University Library of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Prof. Dr. Andreas Degkwitz (Director of the University Library of the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
phone: +49 30 2093-99300
e-mail: andreas.degkwitz(at)ub.hu-berlin.de
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Matthias Harbeck
phone: +49 30 2093-99223
e-mail: matthias.harbeck(at)ub.hu-berlin.de
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Dr. Sabine Imeri
phone: +49 30 2093-99240
e-mail: sabine.imeri.1(at)ub.hu-berlin.de
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Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (GESIS)
Prof. Dr. Alexia Katsanidou
phone: +49 221 47694 490
e-mail: alexia.katsanidou(at)gesis.org
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Oliver Watteler
phone: +49 221 47694 418
e-mail: oliver.watteler(at)gesis.org
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Advisory Board
Prof. Dr. Hansjörg Dilger
University Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Research Dean of the Department of Political and Social Sciences, and Executive Director and Head of the Work Unit Medical Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin.
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Dr. Grit Laudel
Senior Researcher in Sociology of Science at the Institute of Sociology, Technische Universität Berlin.
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Dr. Almuth Leh
Managing Director of the Institute for History and Biography, Head of the Archive of the Institute for History and Biography ‚Deutsches Gedächtnis / German Memory‘, Editor and Publisher of ‚BIOS - Zeitschift für Biographierforschung, Oral History und Lebensverlaufsanalysen‘, Member of the Council of the International Oral History Association, Head of the research group ‚digital humanities - Forschen im digitalen Raum / research in the digital space‘ in the research focus ‚digitale_kultur / digital_culture‘ of the FernUniversität Hagen.
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Prof. Dr. Günter Mey
Professor of Developmental Psychology, University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal; ‚Institute for Qualitative Research‘ at the International Academy at Freie Universität Berlin (Scientific Director), ‚FQS – Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research‘ (co-editor), ‚SSOAR – Social Science Open Access Repository‘ (co-founder), ‚Berliner Methodentreffen Qualitative Sozialforschung / Berlin Meeting on Qualitative Research Methods‘ (organizer).
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Dr. Herwig Reiter
Research Associate at the Department of Social Monitoring and Methodology; Deutsches Jugendinstitut München, responsible for counseling and advanced training in qualitative methods.
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Prof. Dr. Margrit Schreier
Professor of Empirical Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Psychology and Methods, Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences/BIGSSS; Jacobs University Bremen.
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Ass. Jur. Heidi Schuster
Data Protection Officer of the Max Planck Society; working group Data Protection of the German Data Forum (RatSWD).
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Prof. Dr. Jörg Strübing
Professor of Sociology with a Focus on Methods and Methodologies of Qualitative Social Research, University of Tübingen; German Data Form (RatSWD) (permanent guest); spokesperson of the section Methods of Qualitative Social Research in the German Sociological Association (DGS) (2008-2012); member of the Council of the DGS; Advisory Board member of the RDC eLabour.
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Prof. Dr. Hella von Unger
Professor of Sociology with a focus on ‚Qualitative Methods in Empirical Social Research‘, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
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Prof. Dr. Susanne Vogl
Professor of Sociology with a focus on quantitative and qualitative social science research methods, as well as Head of the Department of Sociology and Empirical Social Research, University of Stuttgart.
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