This year, the NETWORKSHOP conference celebrated its 35th anniversary. Organized by the HUNGARNET Association between March 31 and April 2, 2026, the event, the most prestigious domestic conference on computer networking and applied information technology in higher education, public education, research, and public collections, was hosted by the University of Debrecen. The multi-day program featured presentations, interactive sessions, tutorials, and mini-workshops, as well as lightning talks. Key focal points of the conference included, among others, “Data Repository Systems and Networks,” “Long-Term Preservation and Web Archiving,” “Major Trends in the Application of AI: Service Developments in Content Delivery,” and “New Network Technology Solutions.” The RDC team gave one presentation and one interactive session. 

The Research Documentation Centre (RDC) at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences (Budapest, Hungary) has participated with two talks at the 20th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC) in Zagreb. Anna Horváth and Enikő Meiszterics presented on “The Conception and Development of Data Steward Training Programs in Hungary: The Roles of Collaboration, Necessity, Flexibility and Community-building”. 

Summer School Archives x Data. Paper meets digital documentation

The Research Documentation Center (RDC) of the ELTE Center for Social Sciences Research participated in the 20th International Digital Curators Conference (IDCC) in Zagreb with two presentations. The presentation by KDK staff members Róza Vajd, Judit Gárdos, and Tímea Venczel, titled “Standardization versus Preservation: Supporting Interoperability through the Development of Thematic Metadata for Social Science Archives,” addressed the challenges of data standardization and interoperability in social science research.

Timea Venczel  (RDC, ELTE Centre for Social Sciences) participated in the 2nd OSCARS project meeting in Seville on behalf of the ONTOLISST project. She presented the main research results and the related poster. During the event, several discussions took place among the project representatives, and the Competence Centres were also introduced. 

Our institution organized the annual international conference of Data Documentation Initiative this year. The event attracted participants from 22 countries. 

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.