Danuta Życzyńska-Ciołek

A dataset titled ‘An Explanation-oriented Inquiry Dialogue Game for Expert Collaborative Recommendations’ by Qurat-ul-ain Shaheen has been published in the QDA. The dataset contains selected materials from a study aimed at evaluating the usefulness of a dialogue protocol designed to facilitate collaborative decision-making among medical experts. Participants were presented with scenarios (medical cases) based on anonymized patient data from a publicly available dataset titled ‘Thyroid Disease‘. In each scenario, participants were asked to diagnose the patients and prescribe appropriate treatment. After each session, qualitative interviews were conducted with the study participants.

The Qualitative Data Archive of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN) collects and provides access, via the Social Data Repository, to qualitative research materials originating from social research. To enable the sharing of other types of data produced or collected by IFiS PAN researchers, the Institute has created its own collection in the RepOD Open Data Repository.

On 22 October 2025, Maciej Melon, who administers the collection, participated in a meeting of representatives of institutions managing their own collections in RepOD. The aim of the meeting was to present selected collections — including the one maintained by IFiS PAN — and to discuss the principles for verifying shared datasets. Approximately 60 administrators of institutional collections took part in the event. The meeting was organized by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling at the University of Warsaw.

The IFiS PAN collection is available here: https://repod.icm.edu.pl/dataverse/ifis

Six academic institutions – the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw School of Economics, the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń – have joined forces to establish the Consortium for Social Data.

The initiative aims to: (1) coordinate Poland’s accession to, and participation in, the European research infrastructure CESSDA (ERIC), (2) archive and provide open access to social data, (3) maintain and ensure the long-term operation of the Social Data Repository.

The Consortium has been set up for an initial two-year term, with the possibility of extension. Its membership is open, allowing additional institutions to join in the future.

On July 16, 2025, the Minister of Science and Higher Education approved a document titled „Polityka otwartego dostępu do danych badawczych finansowanych ze środków publicznych” [‘Policy on Open Access to Research Data Funded by Public Resources’]. The development of the Policy was undertaken to comply with the provisions of the Act of August 11, 2021, on open data and the reuse of public sector information.

The policy is addressed to entities within the science and higher education sector that possess research data generated with public funding. The document is not normative in nature – it serves as a ‘roadmap’ containing information, goals, recommendations, and proposals regarding open access to research data. A follow-up document will be developed, providing a more detailed action plan that specifies how individual tasks will be implemented, including the identification of appropriate sources of funding.

A dataset titled ‘Digital Communication Content Corpus — a manually and automatically annotated corpus’, authored by Dr. Maja Sawicka from the University of Warsaw (UW), has been published in the QDA.

The Digital Communication Content Corpus was created as part of the project ‘Methods for studying digital communication and textual data’, funded under the 16th edition of the University of Warsaw’s Didactic Innovation Fund competition in the years 2020–2022. The project was carried out in collaboration between the Faculty of Sociology at UW, the Institute of Polish Language at UW, and the CLARIN-PL consortium.

The corpus includes material from public profiles on major social media platforms used by Polish internet users: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The communication recorded in the corpus concerns five topics that participants of the classes conducted within the project deemed important: methods for diagnosing misinformation and combating it (fact-checking), issues related to climate change (climate), body positivity and attitudes toward the body (body), communication by actors hostile to the EU (anti-EU), and current conspiracy theories (conspiracy_theories).

On June 4, the final Oral History Seminar of this academic year took place at IFiS PAN. The presenter was Dr. Kamil Borecki ( “Remembrance and Future” Center in Wrocław), who is conducting research on the solidarity strike in Wrocław in August 1980. He presented an interview with an employee of the Wrocław River Shipyard, who was one of the strike leaders at his workplace.

The Oral History Seminars are co-organized by the Faculty of Culture and Arts at the University of Warsaw, the Qualitative Data Archive at IFiS PAN, and the Polish Oral History Association. The initiative is under the patronage of the “Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej” („Wrocław Yearbook of Oral History”). More information can be obtained at: seminariumoralhistory@gmail.com.

On 23 April, during the Oral History Seminar at IFiS PAN, Ms. Katarzyna Szarla, a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Warsaw, presented an interview recorded as part of her doctoral project, which focuses on the social history of HIV/AIDS in Poland during the 1980s and 1990s.

The Oral History Seminars are co-organized by the Faculty of Culture and Arts at the University of Warsaw, the Qualitative Data Archive at IFiS PAN, and the Polish Oral History Association. The initiative is under the patronage of the “Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej” („Wrocław Yearbook of Oral History”). If you would like to participate in future meetings or receive more information, please contact us at: seminariumoralhistory@gmail.com.

A new dataset titled ‘Interviews with System Operators and Users of the Polish BBSes,’ authored by Michał Owczarek, has been published in the QDA. The dataset includes 19 anonymized transcripts of individual interviews with the system operators and users of the Polish BBSes. BBSes were computer servers connected via telephone line. They were used as a social media before the internet, the users were sharing knowledge, software and sense of community in the decentralized fashion. The interviews were conducted from November 2023 to February 2025 with the people engaged in the BBS culture in the 90s. The interviews were part of the project funded by the National Science Center (NCN), Poland, under the PRELUDIUM BIS funding scheme. The PI of the grant was Professor Mirosław Filiciak (SWPS University).

A new dataset titled ‘The Spatiality of Urban Safety and Care. A Qualitative Study of Young Women’s Life Trajectories in Argentina,’ authored by Anna Bednarczyk, has been published in the QDA. The project from which the data originates explored the intersection of gender-based violence, urban safety, and care networks in the lives of young women living in both middle-class and marginalized neighborhoods in Córdoba, Argentina. The project was funded by the National Science Center (NCN), Poland, under the PRELUDIUM funding scheme. The dataset contains anonymized transcripts of individual and group interviews conducted in 2022 with 29 individuals (in Spanish).

On 26 February, the Oral History Seminar was held at IFiS PAN. Participants discussed two interviews with a Ukrainian refugee woman, conducted in 2023 and 2024 by Dr. Anna Wylegała, Professor at IFiS PAN, as part of the Testimonies from the War (U-CORE) project. Information on the two phases of the project can be found at https://swiadectwawojny2022.org/en/ and https://u-core.org/en/. The discussion also covered the methodology and ethical considerations involved in collecting and sharing this type of material.

The Oral History Seminars are co-organized by the Faculty of Culture and Arts at the University of Warsaw, the Qualitative Data Archive at IFiS PAN, and the Polish Oral History Association. The initiative is under the patronage of the “Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej” („Wrocław Yearbook of Oral History”). If you would like to participate in future meetings or receive more information, please contact us at: seminariumoralhistory@gmail.com.