IASSIST (International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology) is an international organization of professionals working with information technology and data services to support research and teaching. IASSIST was founded in 1974. We want to leverage our unique expertise in the social sciences to help benefit all data professionals and support open science.
Our members work in information technology, libraries, data services, research & higher education, government, non-profit and private research sector to discover data, curate it, make it available, and keep it available. We work together to advocate for responsible data management and use, to build a broader community surrounding research data, and encourage the development of data professionals.
International Membership
~400 Members from a variety of settings
Our members represent a variety of organizational sectors across the globe; the majority are within acedemia, working in data services, libraries, archives or research positions.
Image 1. IASSIST members by region: More than 70% are in the US, 15% in Europe and 15% in Canada and the rest in Africa or areas without an active region.
Image 2. IASSIST members by organisational sector: Almost 80% work in academia and less than 10% in either governmental or non-profit organizations.
Numbers represent averages in early 2019.
Expertise and Colleagues
Image 3. IASSIST members by organizational type. A little less than half work in a library, about a quarter in a data archive, and the rest in academic departments, data labs or data services.
Many members identify themselves as:
- Information specialists
- Data librarians
- Reference librarians
- Technology professionals
- Data archivists
Networking Opportunities
- Annual conference » Read more
- Active discussion list » Read more
- Standing committees, topical interest groups » Read more
- Professional Development webinars » Read more
Goals
As an organization IASSIST strives to:
- Foster and promote a network of excellence for data service delivery
- Advance infrastructure in the social sciences
- Provide opportunities for collegial exchange of sound professional practices
IASSIST Communities
Image 4. IASSIST’s core communities are social scientists and researchers, data and information specialists, and data scientists, methodologists and computing specialists. There is notable overlap within these three.
- Social science researchers and scientists who are producers and users of micro and macro-level social data;
- Information/data specialists, who curate and preserve social data, manage facilities and provide services that promote the secondary use of social data;
- Methodologists, computing specialists and data scientists who advance technical methods to manipulate and analyze social data.
Strategic Directions
- IASSIST members are working together to advocate for responsible data management and use, to build a broader community surrounding research data, and encourage the development of data professionals.
- Read our most recent strategic plan: Democratizing Data - The IASSIST Strategic Plan 2010-2014.