Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
Lausanne, Switzerland
FORS (Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences) was established in 2008 as a new social science infrastructure institution in Switzerland, emerging from the country's 1990s national research programme Demain la Suisse (Switzerland Tomorrow), which sought to revitalize the social sciences. FORS pooled responsibility for several existing long-term projects, including the Swiss Household Panel (SHP), the Swiss Electoral Studies (SELECTS), SIDOS, and the Swiss Information and Data Archive for the Social Sciences. The institution is co-financed by the Swiss Confederation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and its host institution, the University of Lausanne. SWISSUbase — FORS's primary national data repository platform — was subsequently launched and has expanded to a consortium including the Universities of Lausanne, Neuchâtel, and Zurich.
SWISSUbase is Switzerland's primary national repository for social science research data, operating in partnership between FORS and the Universities of Zurich and Lausanne. The platform stores a growing catalog of quantitative and qualitative datasets from Swiss and international social science research. Key survey programs archived and disseminated through FORS include the Swiss Household Panel, SELECTS (Swiss Electoral Studies), MOSAiCH, the European Social Survey (ESS), the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), the European Values Study (EVS), and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). FORS is the sole Swiss node for several major European and international survey programs.
FORS provides comprehensive data management consulting, including support for survey design, data documentation, anonymization, data sharing, and long-term archiving. The institution conducts its own methodological and thematic research, publishes working paper series and the journal Survey Methods, and produces the Swiss Social Report. FORS holds CoreTrustSeal certification — the international standard for trusted data repositories — and represents Switzerland on the Council of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA).
All data archived on SWISSUbase and its related services are freely accessible. Researchers require a SWITCH edu-id account for dataset downloads. The platform supports FAIR data principles and multi-lingual metadata. Training and workshops on survey methodology, research data management, and open access are offered regularly through FORS.