Profile

Qualiservice is a data service center that archives and provides qualitative research data from the various fields of the social sciences for scientific re-use. Our services include personalized and study-specific advice, as well as curation and secure processing of your data for re-use and long-term archiving. We also provide research data and relevant contextual information for scientific re-uses in research and teaching. Internationally interoperable metadata ensure that all data-sets can be searched and found. Persistent identifiers (i.e., digital object identifiers, DOI) guarantee that data and details about the study remain permanently citable.

Qualiservice was accredited by the RatSWD in 2019 and adheres to its quality assurance criteria. Qualiservice is committed to the DFG Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice and takes into account the FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship as well as the OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding.

 

The history of Qualiservice

 

  • Qualiservice is the successor to the Archive for Life Course Research (Archiv für Lebenslaufforschung, ALLF), which emerged from the Collaborative Research Center 186 “Status Passages and Risks in the Life Course” at the University of Bremen (1988-2001). ALLF assumed control over the qualitative research data of the CRC, creating an original corpus of about 700 interview transcripts that were digitalized and anonymized.

  • From 2003 to 2005, ALLF carried out a feasibility study in cooperation with the GESIS Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences that was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). This study examined the potential demand and supply for a data service center for qualitative interview data (Medjedocvić 2001, Opitz & Mauer 2005) and developed the conceptual basis for Qualiservice (Medjedocvić & Witzel 2010).

  • From 2011 to 2014, Qualiservice received funding from the DFG to develop workflows for archiving and providing qualitative social science data in close collaboration with the scientific community.

  • In 2015, Betina Hollstein, Professor of Qualitative Methods and Microsociology at the University of Bremen, took over the management of Qualiservice and integrated it into the SOCIUM Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy.

  • Since 2018, the DFG has funded the implementation of Qualiservice as a nationwide research data service center for qualitative social science data.

  • In February 2019, Qualiservice became a part of the Scientific Information Service Social and Cultural Anthropology (Fachinformationsdienst für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie, FID SKA) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Additional DFG funding has enabled us to extend our services to ethnographic data, such as field notes, audio and video data, or social media data.

  • Starting in 2019, Qualiservice began collaborating with ten other institutions to create Domain Data Protocols (DDPs). These are public and referenced sample protocols designed to facilitate the data-specific organization of research data in empirical educational research. This 'DDP-Bildung' project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF).

  • In June 2019, Qualiservice was accredited by the German Data Forum (now KonsortSWD) as a scientific research data center. The monitoring commission of the RatSWD oversees the quality of all accredited data centers.

 

Consortium Partners and Workgroups

  • SOCIUM – Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy, University of Bremen
    The Qualiservice executive office is based at the SOCIUM, where it is responsible for advisory and support services for research projects, transfers of data, data usage agreements, exchange with the scientific community, as well as cooperation with national and international partners. The Safe Center, in which the research data and materials are curated under secure conditions – including anonymization checks – is also located at the SOCIUM. Workstations for guests in protected facilities (‘safe rooms’) allow researchers to conduct research with less anonymized data on the basis of a specific user agreement. The executive office also ensures that legal regulations and ethical considerations on 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 shaping the worldwide development of research data infrastructures as part of several international collaborations. With origins in environmental and climate research, PANGAEA now works in an interdisciplinary manner and is continuously expanding its workflows. PANGAEA has adapted these workflows to enable the storing and provision of sensitive qualitative data from the social sciences. It 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). Metadata created with PANGAEA are harvested by various international metadata platforms. The interoperability of metadata also allows for “cross-linking” between literature and data. For example, the SCHOLIX service, which has been established with significant participation from PANGAEA, enables publishers to provide links to the data upon which journal articles are based.

 

  • State and University Library Bremen (SuUB)
    The State and University Library Bremen (SuUB) contributes to Qualiservice with its expertise in creating and developing metadata for qualitative research data (
    Betancort-Cabrera & Haake 2014). Moreover, the SuUB publishes the Qualiservice study reports, which provide contextual information on archived research data.

 

 

  • GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
    For the distributed archiving of mixed-methods studies, Qualiservice and GESIS are developing workflows to make both quantitative and qualitative research data accessible in a user-friendly way. Since June 2019, Qualiservice has also been collaborating with ten other partners in the joint project Domain Data Protocol (DDP) Bildung, which is coordinated by GESIS.

Team

SOCIUM - Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy

Prof. Dr. Betina Hollstein (Head of Qualiservice)
e-mail: betina.hollstein(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Patricia Tegeler-Winde, Secretary of Prof. Dr. Hollstein
phone: +49 421 218-58638
e-mail: p.tegeler-winde(at)uni-bremen.de

Dr. Kati Mozygemba
phone: +49 421 218-57052
e-mail: k.mozygemba(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Dr. Michaela Rizzolli
phone: +49 421 218-57085
e-mail: michaela.rizzolli(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Hai Ha Nguyen
phone: +49 421 218-58528
e-mail: haiha.nguyen(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Theresa Manderscheid
phone: +49 421 218-58516
e-mail: theresa.manderscheid(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Paula Lein
e-mail: paula.lein(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Dr. Susanna Prepeliczay
e-mail: s.prepeliczay(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Christof Wittmaack
phone: +49 421 218-57059
e-mail: wittmaack(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Karolin Meyer
phone: +49 421 218-57059
e-mail: ka_me(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Monika Leichtling
phone: +49 421 218-57059
e-mail: m.leichtling(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Sebastian Schlerka
phone: +49 421 218-58533
e-mail: sebastian.schlerka(at)uni-bremen.de
web:

Egor Gordeev
phone: +49 421 218-65756
e-mail: egordeev(at)uni-bremen.de

Mareike Sauer (Qualiservice Management)
phone: +49 421 218-58559
e-mail: mareike.sauer(at)uni-bremen.de

Student employees

Alina Köster
e-mail: ali_koe(at)uni-bremen.de

Former employees

Dr. Jan-Ocko Heuer
web:

Dr. Benjamin Quasinowski
web:

Susanne Kretzer

Dr. Anne Gißke
web:

Dr. Elisabeth Huber

Jaqueline Buhk

Dr. Tanja Kruse
web:

Angela Großkopf
web:

Alexander Polte
web:

Jenny Hahs

 

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
web:

Dr. Tom Nicolai
E-Mail: tnicolai(at)marum.de

Uwe Schindler
phone: +49 421 218-65595
e-mail: uschindler(at)pangaea.de
web:

Egor Gordeev
Telefon: +49 421 218-65756
E-Mail: egordeev(at)uni-bremen.de

Former employees

Stefan Brachat

Wienke Strathern

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
web:

Noemi Betancort
phone: +49 421 218-59592
e-mail: noemi.betancort(at)suub.uni-bremen.de
web:

Dr. Martin Blenkle
phone: +49 421 218-59410
e-mail: blenkle(at)suub.uni-bremen.de
web:

Scientific 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
web:

Matthias Harbeck
phone: +49 30 2093-99223
e-mail: matthias.harbeck(at)ub.hu-berlin.de
web:

Dr. Sabine Imeri
phone: +49 30 2093-99240
e-mail: sabine.imeri.1(at)ub.hu-berlin.de
web:

Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (GESIS)

Prof. Dr. Alexia Katsanidou
phone: +49 221 47694 490
e-mail: alexia.katsanidou(at)gesis.org
web:

Oliver Watteler
phone: +49 221 47694 418
e-mail: oliver.watteler(at)gesis.org
web:

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.
web:

Dr. Grit Laudel
Senior Researcher in Sociology of Science at the Institute of Sociology, Technische Universität Berlin.
web:

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).
web:

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.
web:

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.
web:

Ass. Jur. Heidi Schuster
Data Protection Officer of the Max Planck Society; working group Data Protection of the German Data Forum (RatSWD).
w
eb:

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.
w
eb:

Prof. Dr. Hella von Unger
Professor of Sociology with a focus on “Qualitative Methods in Empirical Social Research”, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
web: