Enabling high-quality social science research
Governance and funding
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in its current form established the UK Data Service in October 2012, after originally setting up and funding the organisation in earlier forms since 1967.
We receive additional funding from other UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) councils including the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to enable specific projects such as the Smart Energy Research Lab (SERL), and European based projects and investments such as the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) and Synergies for Europe’s Research Infrastructure in the Social Sciences (SERISS).
A productive investment
Through enabling long-term research access to invaluable data, the UK Data Service plays a big part in helping build a stronger society and creating better lives for people in the UK. We add value to key national data investments by continuing to make them reusable long-term, enabling research with real impact. We train researchers in highly specialist data skills, previously lacking in the UK and we enable those who teach social sciences to use real data to
bring their teaching to life.
As a free service to data owners and free at the point of use to non-commercial data users, we provide long term value for money to both data owners and data users.