Improving the exploration and accessibility of research data in the social sciences and humanities (SSH)

The ONTOLISST project aims to redefine the way archives construct realities by assigning concepts to social science research data. Currently, there is a lack of multilingual tools to support concept attribution for this type of data, which hinders their exploration and accessibility.

The project team’s analysis of existing ontologies will provide a basis for interpreting thematic metadata systems, which are often taken for granted—even though they are shaped by specific languages and, more significantly, by historically formed practices rooted in a single discipline.
The project began on December 1st, 2024, and will run for 24 months.

Light Social Science Thesaurus (LiSST)

To address the above challenges, the team will develop the Light Social Science Thesaurus (LiSST), a controlled vocabulary of approximately 100 terms organised into two hierarchical levels. This thesaurus will be used to create a reference corpus for the (semi-)automated assignment of concepts within research data repositories, using annotated samples of social science (meta)data in English, Finnish, French, and Hungarian.

In addition, the project will explore how Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools can support efficient concept annotation across all languages.

Within this project, the CDSP is leading Work Package 1, which focuses on gathering metadata and thesauri from various European and international archives.

Project Partners

HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences (coordinateur), Research Documentation Centre (Hongrie), Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, CDSP (France) et L’Université de Tampere, Finish Social Science Data Archive (Finlande).

Scientific Coordinator: Judit Gárdos, chercheuse à HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences (CSS) et Responsable du Research Documentation Centre du CSS. 

Project Team Members

Alina Danciu, Júlia Egyed-Gergely, Chloé Hertrich, Anna Horváth, Jieun Jeong, Éva Kovács, Mari Kleemola, Lucie Marie, Enikő Meiszterics, Miklós Sebők, Róza Vajda

This project is funded by the European Union, as part of the first European OSCARS call.