v2026.1CASRAI Dictionary 1,610 entries across 24 domains · CC-BY 4.01,610 entries · CC-BY 4.0

Dictionary termTrack BStablev2026.2

UK Data Service (concept)

A UK ESRC-funded data infrastructure that holds, curates, and provides access to social, economic, and population data resources for research, learning, and policy, comprising the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex and partner institutions.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

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Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A researcher accessing the British Social Attitudes Survey through UKDS for secondary analysis.
Is an instance
A controlled-access ONS Secure Research Service dataset accessed via UKDS's Secure Lab.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A discipline-specific health-data repository is not the UK Data Service.
Not an instance
A generalist repository like Zenodo is not the UK Data Service.

Editorial commentary

The UK Data Service is the UK’s principal social and economic data infrastructure. It holds the UK’s official survey data (including the UK Longitudinal Household Study), census microdata, qualitative data archive, and many other resources. It offers tiered access — open, safeguarded, controlled — with controlled-access via a secure Safe Centre or Secure Lab implementing the Five Safes framework. UKDS has CoreTrustSeal certification and is the UK’s principal node in cross-national social-science data infrastructures (CESSDA).

References

UK Data Service, 'About UKDS' (ukdataservice.ac.uk).

Also known as

UKDS · UK Data Archive

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="UK Data Service (concept)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/uk-data-service-concept" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/uk-data-service-concept",
  "name": "UK Data Service (concept)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/uk-data-service-concept",
  "description": "A UK ESRC-funded data infrastructure that holds, curates, and provides access to social, economic, and population data resources for research, learning, and policy, comprising the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex and partner institutions.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/data-infrastructure#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/uk-data-service-concept",
  "sameAs": [
    "UKDS",
    "UK Data Archive"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-10T02:06:21",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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