About the Project

The Dataverse Network is an open source application to publish, share, reference, extract and analyze research data. It facilitates making data available to others, and allows to replicate others work. Researchers and data authors get credit, publishers and distributors get credit, affiliated institutions get credit.

A Dataverse Network hosts multiple dataverses. Each dataverse contains studies or collections of studies, and each study contains cataloging information that describes the data plus the actual data files and complementary files. 

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Awards

2009 Library Technology Excellence Award Honorable Mention

IGI Global announced the new Library Technology Excellence Award, honoring individuals for their effort and commitment to the utilization and understanding of technological resources within the academic and research communities. Micah Altman and the Henry A Murray Archive won Honorable Mention for the paper "Transformative Effects of NDIIPP: The Case of the Henry A. Murray Archive," published in the Winter 2009 issue of Library Trends.

2008 APSA Best Instructional Political Science Website Award

The American Political Science Association (APSA) announced award winners for 2008 in August. The Dataverse Network Project and Gary King won the Information Technology and Politics section award for Best Instructional Political Science Website. The award is described as follows:

"The Best Instructional Political Science Website Award recognizes the Website with the best instructional value for teaching political science."

2007 Harvard Heroes

Harvard Heroes awards recognize Harvard employees and their contributions to the Harvard community. Harvard Heroes are nominated by their peers and winners are honored in a special ceremony presided over by Harvard University President Drew Faust and others. Harvard Heroes provides the university community with a way to celebrate the work of staff and to acknowledge high achievers.

In 2007, members of the Dataverse Network Project won the team achievement award. Team members Merce Crosas, Leonid Andreev, Wendy Bossons, Isabelle Chopin, Gustavo Durand, Ellen Kraffmiller, Bob Treacy, and Akio Sone each were awarded this honor.

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History

History of the Name

Special thanks to Ella Michelle King, who won the contest to name our project, and to Pitney Bowe and The Forbin Group, Inc. for trademark assistance.

History of the Project

The Dataverse Network Project is housed at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard University. Coding of the Dataverse Network software began in 2006 under the leadership of Merce Crosas. We benefited considerably from our experience with our earlier Virtual Data Center (VDC) project, which spanned 1999-2006 and was organized by Micah Altman, Gary King, and Sidney Verba as a collaboration between the Harvard-MIT Data Center (now part of IQSS) and the Harvard University Library.  Precursors to the VDC date to 1987, comprising such entities as a stand-alone software guide to local data, preweb software, and tools to transfer cataloging information by FTP to other sites across campus automatically at designated times.

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Social Contract

Social Contract

In return for the effort so many people put into the Dataverse Network Project, we appreciate if you would contribute back to this collective effort in one of these ways:

• If you like the Dataverse Network, please use it by citing data in publications according to our citation standards; sharing your research data through the Dataverse Network; establishing a dataverse on your web page (or installing your own Dataverse Network and allowing other Dataverse Networks to harvest from your installation metadata, and, when feasible, data); or linking to our Project homepage. We also appreciate if you would cite the Dataverse Network Project and our publications in your reports and publications, and tell others about the Project. The more people involved in these ways, the more we all are able to improve the software for everyone.
• If you think of a useful new feature that could improve the Dataverse Network, please suggest improvements, send us code to implement them, or sponsor the development of specific features with grants or gifts.
• If you find a problem, please report the issue so that we can fix it (or even better, send us a patch).
• Commerical profit-making ventures also are welcome to use Dataverse Network software in any way consistent with our licensing requirements. In addition, our Project team can help provide training and technical assistance in support of your commercial and development efforts, when feasible and when we judge that such help improves the general applicability of, or promotes, the overall Project. Support for the Project via grants of funds, coding assistance, or temporary personnel detailed to our team, make it easier for us to assist commercial efforts.

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Software License

License

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