Jury nominates four candidates for Data Award

Following elaborate discussions in April and May, the jury of the DANS Data Award selected four nominees out of the eighteen entries. One of these four nominees will receive the first DANS Data Award from KNAW president Robbert Dijkgraaf on 18 June in Amsterdam.

With the Data Award DANS wants to highlight the importance of good, sustainable and accessible data in scientific research, and on the important work of the people - often operating outside the spotlight- responsible for the sustainability and accessibility. Using previously collected data pioneering research is being done that often leads to new insights. Of the eighteen entries for the DANS Data Award five are from a historical angle, four from the social sciences and four from archaeology. There were also three linguistic entries, one political science and one demographic entry. The latter two are both part of the final nominees. In addition, a historical and a sociological data project have been nominated.

• The 'Dutch Parliamentary Election Study’ (DPES) is a cumulative dataset of election surveys over the years 1971-2006. The name of Prof.dr. C.W.A.M. Aarts (University of Twente) is attached to this nomination, one of the driving forces behind the study.
• The ‘Historische Steekproef Nederland’ (HSN) is a representative sample of nearly eighty thousand people born between 1812 and 1922 in the Netherlands. Prof. dr. C.A. Mandemakers, working at the International Institute of Social History (IISG) and a central figure in the project, is the representative regarding the Data Award.
• The LISS-panel, with front man Prof. dr. J.W.M. Das (University of Tilburg), includes five thousand households with a total of eight thousand people who are questioned every month.
• The Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS), of which Prof.dr. P.A. Dykstra is the personification in this Data Award procedure, provides data from a large multi-actor and multi-method 'research on family ties in the Netherlands.

In the deliberation of the eighteen nominees, the jury weighed all the criteria for the Data Award. The innovative opportunities and the degree to which researchers can benefit from the dataset are two important criteria. However the quality of the documentation and the innovative nature of the method of archiving and availability count. The four nominees scored the highest. 

If you want to attend the ceremony, we ask you to sign up using the response form on this website.