Having started from within the framework of the HUN-REN Data Repository Platform (HUN-REN ARP) project, since October 1st 2024 all institutions of the HUN-REN (Hungarian Research Network) now have a designated data steward (full-time) position. The initiative proved to be of success: it has received support from the HUN-REN HQ for the coming year (in the form of funding as well).

The Voices of the 20th Century Archive specifically collects materials from interview research to make them available to registered users. The level of access is determined on the one hand by the restrictions set according to the intentions of the depositing researchers, and on the other hand by data protection considerations arising from the nature of the deposited documents themselves. The RDC is responsible for developing and implementing a system of conditions that meets both donor requests and privacy principles.

The ONTOLISST project, launched at the end of 2024 under the coordination of RDC CSS within an international consortium and funded by the European Union, has now completed its first year. The project aims to improve the discoverability and interoperability of social science research data through multilingual, cost-efficient digital tools.

As of November 2025, ARP (Adatrepozitórium Platform/Data Repository Platform) is celebrating its fourth-year anniversary. During these four years we have hit several milestones and what started out as a project is now both an infrastructure and a community, with hundreds of users and members growing in number by the day.

From December 1–5, 2025, the Research Documentation Centre (Kutatási Dokumentációs Központ, KDK) at the Centre for Social Sciences hosts the annual conference of the Data Documentation Initative (DDI), the European Data Documentation Initiative User Conference (EDDI 2025). 

This year, for the first time, the DDI is holding its annual conference, the “European Data Documentation Initiative User Conference”, in Budapest, at the Research Centre for the Humanities.

After several years of preparation, the HUN-REN Data Repository Platform (ARP) is ready to be launched in March 2024. The project is being implemented by experts from three research institutions belonging to the HUN-REN network: the Institute for Computer Science and Control (SZTAKI), the Social Science Research Centre (TK) and the Wigner Research Centre for Physics (Wigner FK), with the support of the HUN-REN HQ (formerly ELKH Secretariat).

Our pilot project aimed to improve archive searchability by testing various machine text analysis techniques on a sample of interview collections held in the digital social science archives of the Voices of the 20th Century and the Research Documentation Centre (RDC) of CSS. The project was carried out in cooperation between the RDC and SZTAKI’s Department of Distributed Systems. 

The fresh volume of the Centre for Social Sciences, presenting the AI projects (funded by MILAB), their main topics and project members running in the CSS between 2020 and 2023 is now available online both in Hungarian and English.

Data of the big-scale research project on integration and disintegration processes in Hungarian society led by Imre Kovách are now available in the RDC.