The Italian Archive
DASSI is the first Italian professional archive dedicated to the social sciences, designed to ensure proper care, secure preservation, and long-term enhancement of data. DASSI is also the Italian Service Provider for the European infrastructure CESSDA ERIC (Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives).
DASSI was established through the collaboration between the University of Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB) and the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy.
UNIMIB contributes to the infrastructure through the experience developed by the Department of Sociology and Social Research in the management, preservation, and distribution of research data in the social sciences. This expertise is also based on the creation, in 1998, of the first Italian archive dedicated to this field.
The CNR, through the Department of Social sciences and humanities, cultural heritage (DSU) and its affiliated research institutes (CNR-IRPPS, CNR-ISTC), provides strategic support for the development, implementation, and management of DASSI, also in coordination with other research infrastructures active in the humanities and social sciences.
• The service is free of charge and open to the scientific community
• A public service for stronger and more collaborative research.
DASSI provides validated, well-documented, and freely downloadable datasets, promoting a culture of data sharing and reuse. This vision contributes to:
• strengthening the quality and transparency of social research;
• increasing the scientific impact of studies;
• fostering open science practices in line with international standards.
Who we address
The primary Designated Community of DASSI consists of researchers working in the social sciences (both academic and non-academic). However, DASSI is also aimed at students, teachers, educators, politicians, media representatives, journalists, ordinary citizens, or anyone interested in using archived data. The distributed data is always accompanied by detailed contextual documentation to ensure understandability within the target community.
An archive, not just a repository
📄DASSI Archive is much more than a simple data repository. Data management and subject-matter specialists ensure:
- Thorough quality controls
- Preparation of datasets for long-term scientific reuse
- Anonymized and secure data, compliant with ethical and regulatory standards
- Accurate documentation to guarantee understanding and replicability
- Greater citability through DOI assignment.
🤝 The DASSI team provides qualified assistance throughout the entire process, from data preparation to final publication, including:
- Assistance during the deposit phase
- Selection of the most appropriate usage license
- Data quality checks
- Support with scientific documentation
🏛️ The infrastructure enables compliance with European open access requirements through:
- Data management aligned with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable)
- Use of open licenses, open formats, and open-source software
- Automatic metadata harvesting to enhance visibility and dissemination
🌍DASSI promotes research data accessibility to facilitate replicability and validation. Data are available through an online catalogue that also feeds into the European CESSDA catalogue.
The archive ensures:
- Metadata compliant with the DDI (Data Documentation Initiative) standard and controlled vocabularies for high interoperability
- DOI assignment for long-term traceability
- Long-term preservation following the OAIS (Open Archival Information System) model
- Responsible data deposition, safeguarding personal data and intellectual property.