Many European countries now have long-established data services. Yet, many European countries still do not have national data services, and so a great deal of original research data is lost and remains forever out of reach. Efforts are now being made at the European level to redress this problem and to establish new data services in countries where none exist to date. The successful FP7 project SERSCIDA (January 2012 – June 2014), funded by the European Commission, aimed to help establish data services in three West Balkan countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia). It involved intensive training, organisation building, development of technical infrastructure, and promotion and outreach activities.

The SEEDS project (South-Eastern European Data Services), co-funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, aims to widen these efforts, based on the SERSCIDA model and project outputs, and backed internationally by CESSDA, to establish new data services in the countries of Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and to continue their integration in the national and international landscape for Croatia and Serbia.

The project, currently in progress, will extend the capacities of selected partner institutions, and will develop knowledge and tools related to data service infrastructures. It will bring partner institutions into the fold of an international movement and network that will provide long-term benefits not only to these institutions, but more importantly to the respective national research communities, including more available data for secondary analyses.

Read more: http://seedsproject.ch