The Core Scientific Team, (CST) of the European Social Survey (ESS) at UPF has just become the new hub of the myESS software project, a collaborative environment for documenting the life cycle of large international survey projects.

Thus, UPF will undertake the maintenance, deployment and subsequent development of a web-based survey project management platform, which will help researchers to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of data processing.

Over the next two years, Diana Zavala-Rojas, Danielly Sorato and other members of RECSM-UPF will supply the maintenance of myESS and provide service for round 10 of the ESS, as well as contributing to an upgrade of the platform with new features for round 11

The members of the RECSM Research Group of the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences that belong to the Core Scientific Team (CST) of the European Social Survey and are mainly responsible for myESS are Diana Zavala-Rojas, as principal investigator, and Danielly Sorato lead software developer.

myESS, an open source project adopted by ESS-ERIC

The myESS project is part of the European Social Survey under its fifth Work Programme (running from 1 June 2021 to 31 May 2023). The tool has been adopted by the European Social Survey European Research Infrastructure (ESS ERIC) to document the life cycle of survey data.

myESS is based on the open source eXo platform and the SMaP open source concept and prototype, developed by GESIS, the project’s IT team within the Horizon 2020 programme “Synergies for Europe’s Research Infrastructures in the Social Sciences” (SERISS).

Over the next two years, Diana Zavala-Rojas, Danielly Sorato and other members of RECSM-UPF will supply the maintenance of myESS and provide service for round 10 of the ESS, as well as contributing to an upgrade of the platform with new features for round 11.

A tool that improves the management and efficiency of research

The myESS platform was initially developed by RECSM to address two permanent, common challenges of projects involving collecting large amounts of data in the humanities and the social sciences: on the one hand, communication (managing daily communication with teams), and on the other, information management (the exchange of data, files and documents, etc.). The latest version of myESS renders communication and information exchange secure, fast and efficient, as it saves national and international survey teams time and effort.

myESS is also an important part of the process to ensure data integrity: the application of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principals to research is crucial to ensure the effective and efficient reuse of data, which is becoming a prerequisite in contemporary research efforts.

Ultimately, myESS will input its specifics to academics who address key challenges for international data collection, breaking down barriers between social science infrastructures and embracing the future of the social sciences.

A consortium that conducts a biennial survey, with a key role played by UPF

ESS-ERIC is a consortium of European research infrastructures that every two years since 2001 has conducted a scientific survey, the European Social Survey, to gauge the attitudes, beliefs and behavioural patterns of various populations of some thirty nations.

At the end of 2021, Spain joined ESS-ERIC as a full partner, with UPF among the seven centres that make up the core scientific team in charge of designing the survey.