Towards integrating the research data life cycle of the social sciences based on semantic technology

Abstract

Social science today comprises collaborative research, which is more and more carried out on the basis of comprehensive digital infrastructures. These infrastructures aim at integrating all relevant resources for the research and providing tools to use these resources. In this paper, we present the research data life cycle in the social sciences and its challenges. We discuss prior work on integrating the parts of the research data life cycle and identify open issues regarding infrastructure, linking, and privacy. Based on that, we present an outlook on how these problems could be addressed by using semantic technology.