Company websites are an important source of economic data and can be used for various scientific approaches, such as predicting firm innovativeness or examining market entry strategies. But the content of those websites changes over time, which requires a continuous monitoring to capture this (change of) information.

For this reason, the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research scrapes the content of corporate websites since 2018 in a panel format, updated every three to six months.

Find out more about the data and how you can access it on our new Mannheim Web Panel page!

Working with data involves attention to data privacy issues in order to protect the individual. But for researchers it can be very demanding to identify which privacy protection regulation is binding and under which conditions it applies to their own work as legal issues are usually not central to their area of expertise.

To offer researchers and other people working with data an entry point to understand those important privacy law issues, the BERD@BW team developed an interactive Virtual Assistant (iVA). iVA leads you with a series of questions through the regulations and provides a result based on your answers.

The first part of iVA, which examines with you if privacy protection regulations apply to your data project, was recently updated and can be accessed here: https://www.berd-bw.de/iva/ (german)

While iVA currently addresses if privacy protection regulations apply to you, we are already working on an extension to cover the issue more profoundly. We are looking forward to present you a second part of iVA, that will let you check if you are allowed to process personal data and what requirements you have to keep in mind.

Our Online-Micro-Series Data Literacy Snacks started on May 12 with a thrilling presentation by Juli Tkotz. With 65 participants in the session, we experienced a lively discussion on reproducible data analysis and a great demand for the exchange of ideas, concepts and practical workflows. For anyone who missed the session or wants to revisit it, we provide the slides on our website.

We are delighted to engage into three more sessions, the next one taking place on May 26, 1pm CEST about Research Data Management by Irene Schumm and Lorena Steeb. We’re looking forward to see you there!

For registration, please send us an e-mail to info@berd-bw.de and let us know, if you would like to attend the whole series or (which) single events. We will confirm your registration and provide you with the Zoom information shortly before each event.

All data will be treated in compliance with the University of Mannheim Data Protection Declaration. By sending us your registration information, you agree to the processing of the data for the reason of registration according to Art. 6 I a) of the General Data Protection Regulation.

We are delighted to announce our free Online-Micro-Series. In our Data Literacy Snacks, we want to provide engaging data literacy contents and skills in a digestive 60 minutes format.

We invite you to join us every second Wednesday 1pm CEST on Zoom starting on May 12.

Please find more information and registration here.