Our Data Services
Internet Data
One of the most important consequences of digitization is that it allows us to store and process enormous amounts of data. New methodological challenges arise and old ones are revisited, together creating new opportunities for research. Most of this type of new digital data, although publicly available, is stored in proprietary data silos not ready to use for empirical analyses by outsiders. The IDSC performs advocacy for the availability of such data to social science and develops tools and skills for data extraction in order to facilitate the use of this type of data for researchers.
Our own research activities prove the usefulness of internet data research. As an example, we offer the “Toll Index,” an experimental monthly indicator for the German business cycle. It measures the monthly transportation activity performed by heavy transport vehicles across the country and has highly desirable availability properties (insignificant revisions, short publication lags) as a result of the innovative data collection technology. The Toll Index data is available via the IDSC data repository system.
This new index is an excellent example of technological, innovation-driven economic telemetry, which can be exploited for economic forecasting.
For details on the underlying nowcasting method of the Toll Index see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/for.1262/abstract
Data Provision / Data Upload
The IDSC strives to offer an ever-increasing inventory of original data for labor market research. In addition to exclusive provisioning of datasets initiated by IZA, our Research Data Center offers datasets uploaded in its repository by researchers themselves. The data repository provides an online-tool for self-determined documentation, upload and publication of research data. It enables researchers to have their data, metadata and outputs preserved longitudinally and helps to provide it to the academic community for further research or to fulfill publication requirements by academic journals. In doing so, researchers obtain a DOI for the proper citation of their dataset and associated publications. This includes survey data, administrative data, experimental data, tabular data and outputs of statistical analyses. Syntax files may also be submitted. All uploaded research data and documentation will be preserved and distributed by the IDSC of IZA in a manner fully controlled by the researcher who deposits the data.
All data collected are accessible to the scientific community as scientific use files for scholarly analyses free of charge.
The Data Repository is available at https://datasets.iza.org/
For further information please contact idsc@iza.org
Data Citation
The IZA Institute of Labor Economics recognizes the importance of proper citation of data as it
- acknowledges the author's sources
- makes identifying data easier
- promotes the reproduction of research results
- allows the impact of data to be tracked
- provides a structure which recognizes and can reward data creators
- increases impact and prestige of publications.
Based on this we worked out a data citation convention which takes into account prior work done by respectable institutions and should become a standard for dataset citation in scientific literature. IZA adopts the data citation conventions across all of its publications: IZA Discussion Paper Series, IZA Journals, IZA World of Labor, etc.
The Data Citation is available at https://www.iza.org/apps/citation/
For further details on our recommended citation standards please contact idsc@iza.org
Data Access via JoSuA
Remote access is an option when data are not directly available to researchers. The IDSC has developed JoSuA, an innovative job submission application, which can be implemented by data providers in order to offer secured remote access to their data.
Originally designed in order to grant international researchers access to German labor market data, JoSuA has matured into a flexible and scalable instrument of data analysis of configurable degree of automation designed to fit the data security provisions of each individual data provider.
JoSuA is not only used at IZA, but also at the Research Data Center of the German Federal Employment Agency (BA) at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). Via JoSuA researchers have access to a broad variety of IAB data sets, e.g., the IAB Employment Panel.
JoSuA is available at https://josua.iza.org/
For questions concerning our dataset portfolio or acquiring JoSuA, please contact idsc@iza.org.
IZA Evaluation Dataset
The IZA Evaluation Dataset Survey (IZA ED Survey) is a novel panel survey which tracks the employment history, behavior and individual traits of a large, representative cohort of individuals. The IZA ED Survey covers a panel of 18,000 individuals who registered as unemployed at the Federal Employment Agency in Germany between June 2007 and May 2008. The individuals were interviewed up to four times over a time span of three years, starting at their entry into unemployment. This data allows the researchers to observe dynamics with respect to individual and labor market characteristics during the early stage of unemployment, as well as tracking long-run outcomes.
For more information see https://ed.iza.org or contact idsc@iza.org
Annual DDI User Conference (EDDI)
Initiated by the IDSC of IZA and the Leibnitz Institute for the Social Sciences (GESIS) the Annual European DDI User Conference (EDDI) provides a discussion forum for European Members of the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI), an actively developed standard specification able to address the documentation and management of data across its entire life cycle. The conference series is run jointly together with the DDI alliance.
Further information: http://www.eddi-conferences.eu/ocs/index.php/eddi/index
IDSC Data Seminar
With its on-demand Data Seminar, IZA fosters cooperation and creates synergies by providing a forum for researchers to exchange knowledge about datasets that are vital for research, or about their own data, which have often been put together with the aid of the IDSC. Researchers interested to present their data sets or request a data presentation should contact idsc@iza.org.
IDSC Cloud Service
Supported by the IT group of IZA, the IDSC offers cloud services for the members of IZA and briq in order to facilitate effective cooperation between the institutes, the IZA research network, and third-party collaborators. The services are available at:
Contact idsc@iza.org for more information.