CIMES - Germany

Access to microdata for scientific purposes
in European countries

Access to microdata for scientific purposes in Germany

flag of germany

Contact

Name of the microdata access service

Research Data Centre
of the Federal Statistical Office

Postal address

Gustav-Stresemann-Ring 11
D-65189 Wiesbaden (Germany)

Email

forschungsdatenzentrum@destatis.de

Website

https://www.forschungsdatenzentrum.de/en

Access conditions

General conditions

The access to microdata via the Research Data Centres (RDC) of the Federal Statistical Office Germany is regulated by law. The use has to be requested and is subject to certain conditions.
The use of official microdata is

  • Regulated by law: The legal foundation of the RDC is the Federal Statistics Law, especially section 1.
  • Committed to confidentiality: All results are checked for statistical confidentiality, Data users who plan to re-identify individual cases are liable to prosecution. 
  • Bound to a specific user or group of users: Scientific facilities assigned with independent scientific research are eligible for use. The data may only be used by persons who belong to the eligible facility.
  • Bound to a specific purpose: The use is restricted to scientific projects. The microdata may only be used for the project described in the request form.
  • Temporary: Requested data sets can usually be used for a period of three years. This period can once be extended for another three years. If a publication is in a peer review process at the end of a project, stationary peer review phase can be requested to generate necessary changes.
  • Contractually agreed: A user contract is concluded between the scientific institute and the RDC.
  • Liable for costs: A fee is charged for the use of official German microdata.

For more information, please visit https://www.forschungsdatenzentrum.de/en/terms-use. 

Conditions for non-resident researchers

Access for foreign researchers is restricted to members of foreign universities. Those may access data using the onsite ways of data access (Safe Centre, Remote Execution). Furthermore, Public Use Files and Campus Files are available to everyone.

Scientific Use Files may not be accessed outside of Germany. If no onsite access is available for a given statistic or survey year but a Scientific Use File is, foreign researchers can access those at a safe centre or via remote execution.

Conditions for students

PhD students are eligible at the same conditions as other researchers. The same goes for students who want to use RDC data for their qualification works, e.g. seminar paper or bachelor/master thesis. However, those students are recommended to use Scientific Use Files.

Discounts on datasets from the RDC standard data supply are available for students and PhD students.

Legal framework

Federal Statistics Law (Bundesstatistikgesetz – BStatG) 1987 in its newest revision. Most important are §16(1) and §16(6).

How much does it cost?

Campus Files and Public Use Files are free of charge and can be accessed via an online tool after registration: https://campus-file-fdz.nrw.de/ 

Scientific Use Files, Safe Centre and Remote Execution are charged with a fixed price per data product (i.e. per statistic, survey year and way of access) from the standard data supply:

  • Regular charge: 250 € per data product
  • Discount for PhD students (upon request): 50 € per data product
  • Discount for students (upon request): 25 € per data product

Project-specific processing (e.g. merging of data, recoding of variables) of the data is charged with an additional 250 € for every additional project specific auxiliary service. There is no discount for this service.

For more information, please see: https://www.forschungsdatenzentrum.de/en/user-charge 

How long does it take to obtain data?

If a research institute that requests data access has not yet accessed RDC data, it first has to be accredited as an eligible research institution. The accreditation process may take several weeks.
If an institution has already been accredited or if a university requests the data, the duration between the request for access and the first use of data depends on several factors: 

  • Chosen way of data access (Scientific Use Files are usually faster accessible than onsite ways of access)
  • Quality of the request (is all relevant information correct and available)
  • Requested data (datasets from the standard supply are faster available that project-specific processings)
  • Current workload at the RDC
  • Time it takes the institution to return the signed contract

For an accredited institution, an average duration for the time between request for access and actual data access is about 2-3 weeks for onsite access and about 1-2 week for Scientific Use Files.

Campus Files and Public Use Files can be accessed directly after the registration is completed.

Information on access

A request form is available online and can be used for all data and all ways of access: https://www.forschungsdatenzentrum.de/en/request

For regular projects, several researches can be named that are all allowed to use the data within the same research project. For projects using the PhD students discount, only the PhD student and up to two supervisors may be named.

For projects using the students discount, only the student and one supervisor may be named.  
For further details, please see https://www.forschungsdatenzentrum.de/en#data-use 

Other

The Research Data Centre is collaborating closely with the Research Data Centre of the Federal States. All information stated above is valid for both RDC. All websites linked above are part of their joint internet presence.

Next to the Research Data Centres of the Statistical Offices of the Federation and the Federal States there are several other Data Centres that offer a wide range of data and whose conditions and charges may differ from the ones described above. For a full list of Data Centres, please see https://www.konsortswd.de/en/services/research/all-datacentres/. 

Types of microdata available for Germany

Public Use Files (PUF) and Campus Files (CF)

Public Use Files (PUF) and Campus Files (CF) are absolutely anonymised microdata. Because of the strong anonymization, only selected variables are available and variables with a high degree of subject-related detail are aggregated. CF are smaller subsamples which are designed specifically for teaching to allow students to acquire methodological knowledge and gain first experiences in analysing microdata.

PUF and CF can be downloaded for free after a successful registration.

Scientific Use Files (SUF)

Scientific Use Files (SUF) are factually anonymised, standardised datasets for off-site use. Due to legal restrictions, SUF may only be accessed in Germany by researchers who are employed by a research institution that is registered and located in Germany. 

Compared to the on-site ways of access, SUF offer a lower potential for analyses. However, they are designed in a way that makes them suitable for a large part of scientific projects.

Safe centre

In the safe centre there are PC workplaces for guest researchers which are located in all RDC locations. They can be visited by researchers to analyse microdata inside the safe premises of the statistical office. As the data is already protected through the regulation of data access and the configuration of the pc workplace, the microdata at the safe centre can be provided factually or formally anonymised – depending on the sensitivity of the data.

Remote execution

When using remote execution, the data user has no direct access to the data. They rather receive data structure files which resemble the original material with regard to structure and variable values. Using these files, program codes can be prepared and sent to the RDC where it is applied to the formally anonymised data by RDC staff. Data users receive the results of those analyses after the relevant confidentiality checks.

Access to microdata by type of person

 

Public Use Files

Scientific Use Files

Secure Use Files

Public

Yes

No

No

Students

Yes

Yes

Yes

PhD students

Yes

Yes

Yes

Researchers

Yes

Yes

Yes

Foreign researchers

Yes

No

Yes

Modes of access by microdata type

 

Public Use Files

Scientific Use Files

Secure Use Files

Online access

No

No

No

For download

Yes

Yes*

No

Onsite access

No

No

Yes

Remote access

N/A

N/A

N/A

Remote execution

No

No

Yes

* Scientific Use Files are sent to the researcher via an online tool after the according user contract has been signed by both the RDC and the institution. 

Microdatasets available for Germany

Other access points in Europe

Disclaimer

The pages above provide information on microdata disseminated at the national level by the statistical institutes in the European countries and on microdata disseminated by Eurostat.  The pages describe the data and the procedures for requesting access as well as the available types of microdata files (Public Use Files, Scientific Use Files, and Secure Use Files).

This information was initially collected by CASD/GENES for the CIMES database developed for Data without Boundaries project (funded by the 7th Framework Programme, the EU's research funding programme between 2007 and 2013). CIMES stands for Centralising and Integrating Metadata from European Statistics. Various organisations (ADP, CED, CNRS-Réseau Quetelet, FORS, GESIS, RODA, ONS, and UL) contributed to the creation of CIMES by collecting and structuring the metadata for the period of the Data without Boundaries project (2011-2015). In 2021, Eurostat moved the CIMES database to the CROS platform to facilitate updates of countries' information. Eurostat would like to thank all CIMES developers, especially CASD, for sharing the CIMES database and for all efficient collaboration.