The GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences is the largest German infrastructure institute for the
social sciences
Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...
. It is headquartered in
Mannheim, with a location in
Cologne
Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
. With basic research-based services and consulting covering all levels of the scientific process, GESIS supports researchers in the social sciences. As of 2017, the president of GESIS is Christof Wolf.
GESIS is part of the
Leibniz Association and receives federal and state funding.
History
Established in 1986 as German Social Science Infrastructure Services (), GESIS originally consisted of the three independent institutes:
* Social Science Information Centre (, IZ) in Bonn,
* Central Archive for Empirical Social Research (, ZA) in Cologne, and
* Centre for Survey Research and Methodology (, ZUMA) in Mannheim.
In 2007, the three GESIS institutes merged into one. In November 2008, GESIS added "Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences" to its name in order to emphasize its membership in the Leibniz Association.
In November 2011, GESIS Bonn and Cologne were merged into one location in Cologne.
WikiWho
WikiWho, developed by Fabian Flöck and Maribel Acosta and hosted by GESIS,
"parses the complete set of all historical revisions (versions) (of Wikipedia articles in different languages) in order to find out who wrote and/or removed and/or reinserted which exact text at token level at what revision".
''WhoColor'' and ''whoVIS'' are in development. Researchers developing and using ''WikiWho'', also investigated the
Gamergate (harassment campaign).
In 2021, Fabian Flöck planned to leave GESIS and shut down WikiWho sometime in 2022, however, a
Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...
software engineer
Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...
is working to migrate the infrastructure.
Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...
, Community Tech Team has released ''Who Wrote That?'', a browser extension, for
Mozilla Firefox and
Chromium-based browsers using ''WikiWho''.
''Contropedia'' is a related "platform for the real-time analysis and visualization of such controversies in Wikipedia".
References
External links
GESISSSOAR – Social Science Open Access RepositoryDBK – GESIS data catalogueZACAT – GESIS online data portalHISTAT – Database Historical Time Series''methods - data - analyses'' (''mda'')''Social Indicators Information Service'' (''ISI'')
{{DEFAULTSORT:GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Social science research institutes
Leibniz Association
1986 establishments in West Germany
Research institutes established in 1986