Qualiservice supports the anonymization/ pseudonymization of text data with its anonymization tool QualiAnon.

On May 18, 2021, Dr. Kati Mozygemba and Dr. Tom Nicolai presented the anonymization tool QualiAnon in a virtual launch to a broad audience. The tool, developed with funding from the DFG, can now be used free of charge by researchers for the preparation of text-based research materials .

The participation of over 200 people from several countries indicates strong interest in the tool. Among the participants were researchers from different disciplines, research data managers, representatives of research data centers, repositories, authorities and institutions.

The further development of the Qualiservice anonymization tool was mainly aimed at enabling it to be used outside of a particularly protected working environment of a research data center such as Qualiservice.

Users of the QualiAnon tool can highlight words or text passages and replace it with text pertinent to the category of information, on different levels of abstraction. Standardized lists can be used, and replacements can be made on a case- and study-specific basis. QualiAnon documents the replacements and allows for data exports of varying sensitivity. The slides for the event can be found here in German and in English.

QualiAnon is an open source software. We provide the software, a manual and at a later date also the program code via GitHub. If you want to test QualiAnon, please send us a message to qualianon@uni-bremen.de. We will then register you as a user for the GitHub repository and you will get access as well as the possibility to give feedback, ask questions or contribute to the further development of the tool.

News on the development of the tool will be provided on the Qualiservice website (www.qualiservice.org/tools).

If you would like to stay informed about improvements of the QualiAnon tool, you can subscribe to our news list quali-anon@mailman.zfn.uni-bremen.de. Here you can subscribe and unsubscribe to the list.