Access to Data
INFOCORE is committed to a policy of liberating and sharing access to data derived from publicly funded research. Beside its elaborate open access strategy, which ensures that all key findings are rendered available to global academic and professional audiences free of charge, this means that also data gathered by INFOCORE will be rendered accessible to interested researchers.
However, there are three important limitations to this free access to data.
First, some of the data gathered by INFOCORE – specifically during the interview research – is sensitive and subject to a range of restrictions. All concerned data sets will be rendered available only in a thoroughly anonymized fashion. Where the removal of identifying data is insufficient to ensure the protection of interview subjects, certain data sets will be truncated or withheld to guarantee that no protected information is revealed.
Second, most of the data gathered by INFOCORE is restricted in its use for scientific research purposes only. Access to data is therefore subject to prior registration as data user. Registered users are then licensed to make use of the data free of charge, but subject to limitations regarding its exploitation for potential commercial or non-scientific uses.
Third, some of the data gathered by INFOCORE is subject to an embargo period that the project consortium needs to address its own research interests. Before the termination of that embargo period, fellow researchers may still gain access to the data by joining the INFOCORE network as collaborators. During INFOCORE’s project duration, access to the data may be granted to data subject to the provisions of the consortium agreement. After the project is completed, access rights are subject to the joint ownership regulations of the consortium.
Once the embargo period is completed, the anonymized data sets can be accessed without charge by all registered users complying with the licensing conditions.
Researchers interested in obtaining access to INFOCORE data can register as users below. Researchers who wish to obtain access to embargoed INFOCORE data before the embargo period is terminated are invited to contact the consortium and become collaborators in the project network.