International engagement
Sikt is involved in a variety of international collaborative activities and projects. The purpose is to contribute to international initiatives for standardization and quality improvement to services for education and research, and to the international exchange of research data.
Here you will find an overview of the various international networks and collaborative projects in which Sikt participates.
Research data and research information
CESSDA (Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives)
CESSDA, the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives, is a research infrastructure for social science data archives across Europe. Norway is a member of CESSDA, and Sikt is the National service provider.
CESSDA provides free, high-quality archiving and data management services to the international research community. One of its main goals is to make social science data available to researchers regardless of the location of both the researcher and the data.
The aim is to increase the use of data internationally and promote understanding of the societal processes, problems and solutions. CESSDA also supports repositories in data curation.
Data Catalogue
The CESSDA Data Catalogue (CDC) contains metadata of all data in the holdings of CESSDA's service providers, including Sikt. For the time being, the data files themselves are only available through each individual data archive.
Data Management
The Data Management Expert Guide (DMEG) is a comprehensive guide to Research Data Management and FAIR data principles.
CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure)
CLARIN is a European research infrastructure providing digital language resources for research and education, especially within social sciences.
Sikt is a CLARIN Knowledge Centre, providing expertise on data handling and protection to researchers in the European network.
DataCite
DataCite is a leading global non-profit organization that provides persistent identifiers (DOIs) for research data and other research outputs. Sikt is a member and offers DOIs from DataCite as a service.
Read more at DataCite
Data Documentation Initiative (DDI)
DDI is an international standard for describing metadata. The standard is used to document the data, making it machine-readable and reusable. Sikt uses this standard for the documentation and organization of data from questionnaires and interviews, as well as other observation methods that are in use in the social sciences, behavioral studies, economics and health sciences.
euroCRIS
euroCRIS promotes cooperation within and shares knowledge among the research information community and promotes interoperability of research information. Sikt is a member.
European Social Survey (ESS)
ESS is a large European survey, mapping the values and attitudes of Europeans every second year. ESS has collected comparable data from over 30 European countries since 2002.
Sikt is responsible for the ESS data archive, the ESS web page, and is part of the ESS Core Scientific Team that is responsible for carrying out the surveys.
EOSC (European Open Science Cloud)
EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) will offer a virtual environment with open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data.
Both Sikt and our daughter company Sigma2 are engaged in the EOSC.
SSHOC (Social Sciences and Humanities Open Cloud)
SSHOC is an EU project that brings together new and existing infrastructures related to the social sciences and humanities and aims to integrate them into the EOSC (European Open Science Cloud). Sikt contributes to the project by developing a common standard for putting data protection legislation into practice: a European "GDPR Code of Conduct" for the social sciences and humanities.
Sikt also uses ESS data in a pilot project to demonstrate how data and metadata from an international, continuous survey can be adapted for the open cloud service and meet the FAIR objectives.
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID)
ORCID is an international standard for identifying researchers and research contributors. It provides researchers with a unique, persistent digital identifier, to connect their research to them independently of institutional affiliation. Sikt is a member, and Cristin (Current Research Information System in Norway) is connected to ORCID.
OpenAIRE
OpenAIRE is the result of a series of European projects within Open Science. OpenAIRE promotes open science through standards, information, development projects and services. OpenAIRE has a network of National Open Access Desks (NOADs), Sikt is the Norwegian NOAD.
RDA (Research Data Alliance)
RDA (Research Data Alliance) is an open, international network for sharing research data and open science across technologies, disciplines and borders. Sikt is part of the Norwegian node together with four universities.
ICT and technological infrastructure
NORDUnet
NORDUnet is the Nordic NREN, owned by the Nordic countries. Sikt manages Norway’s engagement and is represented in the NORDUnet board. NORDUnet connects the Nordic NRENs to the GÉANT network and facilitates Nordic collaboration within fields of common interest.
GÉANT
GÉANT is the pan-European research and education network that interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). NORDUnet represents the Nordic countries in the GÉANT bodies.
Sikt provides a set of GÉANT services to Norwegian research and higher education. Sikt is also active in the GÉANT community and an active participant in the GÉANT project under Horizon Europe.
EuroHPC
The aim of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is to deploy a world-class exascale-level supercomputing infrastructure in Europe.
Norway was one of the founding members, and Sikts subsidiary, Sigma2, is a partner.
NeIC (Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration)
NeIC facilitates development and operation of high-quality e-infrastructure solutions in areas of joint Nordic interest. NeIC is a distributed organization comprised of technical experts from high performance computing centers within the Nordic countries. Sikts subsidiary, Sigma2 is a part of this distributed organization
PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe)
PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) research infrastructure is the top level (Tier-0) of the European HPC (High Performance Computing) ecosystem, providing computing and data management resources and services. Sikts subsidiary, Sigma2, is the Norwegian partner in this collaboration.
Education and administration
EMREX
The EMREX network interconnects higher education institutions across Europe. EMREX empower individuals to control their own student data and exchange throughout lifespan, across borders for various purposes. Sikt is part of EMREX with the Diploma Registry, and has been part of the development project for EMREX.
Erasmus Without Paper (EWP)
is a set of standards and procedures to support the digitalization of student mobility. EWP is creating a public infrastructure that facilitates a digital administrative workflow. Sikt is an active participant in EWP.
EUNIS (European University Information Systems)
EUNIS helps their member institutions develop their IT landscape by sharing experiences and working together. Sikt is an active participant within student mobility, information security, learning and teaching, a.o.
Nordic Networking Group on bibliographic and infrastructure topics (NNG)
NNG is a networking group focusing on bibliographic and infrastructure topics of common interest. Its aim is to share strategies, policies and information among the Nordic members.
The Groningen Declaration Network (GDN)
The Groningen Declaration Network is an international, non-profit and voluntary network that supports academic and professional digital credential mobility so that citizens worldwide are able to consult and share their authentic educational data autonomously, with the expectation of fair recognition. It does this by bringing together stakeholders from across the global Digital Student Data Ecosystem.
Read more about GDN.
Digital Credentials for EU (DC4EU)
DC4EU is a project within EUs DIGITAL program, piloting the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDIW). DC4EU will support free movement of citizens with various entitlement documents in the social-security domain and student/staff mobility for both identity and records. The project involves 80 relevant institutions from 22 countries backed by 43 public organizations and 49 private entities. Sikt participates with the Diploma Registry, in collaboration with the Norwegian Digitalization Agency.
Read more about DC4EU.
EBSI - VECTOR
EBSI-VECTOR is a project within the EU DIGITAL program, to encnce the use of EBSI.. EBSI is the EU infrastructure for block-chain. As part of the project, scenarios for the use of the infrastructure within education will be set up and piloted. Sikt participates in the project from Norway, together with the Brønnøysund Register Centre.
Read more about EBSI - VECTOR.
Advancing Digital Solutions in Recognition Data Sharing (DigiLink)
DigiLink is an EU project within the Erasmus+ program. Sikt is part of the steering group in the project, which aims to promote the use of digital solutions to share recognition data between ENIC-NARIC centres, higher education institutions, learners, and other stakeholders.
Read more about DigiLink