Access to EIF microdata for scientific purposes

In view of promoting transparency and advancing economic policy research, the EIF has established a procedure for granting access to certain confidential proprietary microdata for scientific purposes. The full procedure is available in these EIF official guidelines for access to microdata. 

It is now possible to request access to data, in anonymised format, related to EIF’s financing instruments. More specifically, the EIF may share microdata pertaining to the business line, supporting mandate, date and size of the financial support as well as the sector, country and region of the beneficiaries’ operations. For further details on the available information, interested parties are invited to contact our dedicated mailbox mentioned below. 

Access to these data shall be granted to all eligible researchers from recognised research entities upon presentation of an appropriate research proposal, a signed confidentially undertaking as well as a declaration of individual confidentiality. Such access shall be granted in a transparent and non-discriminatory way in conjunction with official guidelines. Any restrictions set forth in the guidelines are non-discriminatory and ensure the safeguarding of the interest of EIF’s counterparts and the Fund itself, preventing cases in which there would be clear abuse of the proprietary data.

The EIF may grant access to microdata for scientific purposes, and subject to mandates’ requirements, provided that such access is requested by a:

• research entity recognised by the European Commission (Eurostat). In order to be recognised as a research entity, please follow the procedure set forth by Eurostat available at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/microdata. A research entity can be any academic or governmental institution engaged in analytical activities.
• researcher affiliated to the research entity through an employment contract that provides them with the ranking of “full” or “associate” professor (or equivalent ranking).
• researcher with established knowledge of their research domain. Established knowledge is verified on the basis of relevant scientific works, i.e. scientific works falling in a pre-defined list of scientific domains of relevance to the EIF. In order to prove their established knowledge, researches need to submit proof of:

1. at least three original and relevant scientific works published prior to the date of application for EIF’s microdata. Relevance can be assessed on either a thematic or a methodological basis as outlined in Appendix B of EIF’s official guidelines for access to microdata.
2. at least one original and relevant scientific work published prior to the date of application for EIF’s microdata in a Journal that, in the year of the scientific work’s publication, had an “impact factor” of 0.75 or above, as calculated by the Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

Eligible researchers affiliated to recognised research entities need to submit an appropriate research proposal, a signed confidentially undertaking and an individual confidentiality declaration by contacting our dedicated mailbox. Approved research proposals will be granted access to EIF’s anonymised data (scientific-use files) stored on a secure platform.

For more details regarding the procedure to access EIF’s proprietary data, please consult EIF’s official guidelines for access to microdata.