Shibboleth – Access through institutional logins

Shibboleth is an open source single sign-on protocol for web resources and networks all over the world. Shibboleth allows users to access new websites using credentials assigned to them by their home institution (for example, the research center they work for or the university they attend), thus eliminating the need to create (yet another) user name a password. Currently there are over 3000 organizations that participate in the shibboleth federation, including all of Austria’s major research universities and, now, AUSSDA. Signing up to the AUSSDA Dataverse has never been easier—you’re just a couple of clicks away from access to Austria’s high-quality data lake, with no need to type in personal information. Users who have already created accounts with AUSSDA can easily convert them to shibboleth on their next visit. Alternatively, they can keep their AUSSDA credentials and use them at any of the other members of the shibboleth federation.  

Try it! Connect to AUSSDA using shibboleth

Search engine optimization

AUSSDA is committed to FAIR principles of data sharing: findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability. Data discovery is the critical first step in this process, enabling downstream data access and, ultimately, successful data reuse. AUSSDA has implemented several new “white hat” features to increase the visibility of its Dataverse holdings by optimizing its presence for web crawlers such as Google and Bing. The contributions of our data uploaders are also promoted with these tools, increasing public awareness of their research programs. These developments are part of AUSSDA’s ongoing search engine optimization program, which will continue to facilitate data discovery as new technologies emerge.  

Try it! A simple search example

Robust data file formats

The file formats available for AUSSDA users to download directly impact their ability to analyze and apply social sciences data for new purposes, including research, education, and policy making.We are committed to serving users at every skill level and for any need, and work to eliminate barriers to the use of our data, including proprietary data formats and software. To meet that goal we offer our data to users in multiple file formats, including universal tab-delimited files that can be opened by any data analysis software package, as well open source RData files that can be accessed with highly specialized open source programming software. We also provide proprietary formats such as SPSS- and Stata-files for advanced analysis with user-friendly interfaces. AUSSDA regularly revisits its file format policy in order to keep up with the latest technological innovations and data analysis practices in the social sciences community.  

Try it! Download a dataset in RData format