He also set up the Netherlands Economic History Archive (NEHA), which is now part of IISH. The institute is well-known worldwide for its rich collections on national and international social movements (the international labour movement in particular). Since 1979, the Institute has operated under the umbrella of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). It has a very successful socio-economic history research department with a wide network of research groups around the world. In the past decade it has developed a robust digitisation infrastructure to support the management of digital collections and to facilitate e-research. This infrastructure also accommodates the needs of related institutions such as the Press Museum. The construction of high-quality datasets that allow for global comparative research in social and economic history is one of the institute’s most important strategic actions for the coming years. The research staff of the IISH is currently focusing on two large, interrelated projects: Global Labor History and Global Economic History. Both projects require a massive amount of data on highly diverse indicators that, in conjunction, will provide a new long-term perspective on current social and economic problems associated with globalisation. The IISH actively supports and develops both existing and new collaboratories of specialists around the world, who collect, standardise, and share their data. The enhanced infrastructure of research data constitutes a vital asset in global social and economic research. The IISH provides a number of datahubs (Wages and Prices, Global Labour Relations), as well as the infrastructure for new services such as the e-collaboratory platform and the collective Clio Infra services.

It is a "joint venture" of two major national research organisations in the Netherlands: the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Currently approximately 15 permanent and 15 temporary staff members are working on both recurrent tasks (e.g. acquisition of datasets, data curation, and training and consultation) and research & development projects with a focus on the long term longevity of scientific datasets. DANS staff have been involved in many R&D projects and have world class knowledge on data curation, preservation and dissemination. Research and development projects include: EASY - Electronic Archiving SYstem: a system to accommodate data up- and downloading by researchers for preservation and dissemination purposes; MIXED - Migrating to Intermediate XML for Electronic Data: development of an archival format (and software) for databases and spreadsheets to allow for efficient long term preservation and accessibility of datasets; Persistent Identifiers: a research project to create an overview of the different solutions for persistent identifiers (this is an essential ingredient for setting up durable connections between datasets and/or publications); DARIAH - Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities: an international project that aims to set up a European infrastructure for data curation, preservation and dissemination. DANS will provide long-term storage of all Clio Infra datasets in its EASY system.

The UU-partner of Clio Infra is the Research Institute for History and Culture of the Faculty of Humanities, and in particular the research group on social and economic history led by Prof. Dr. Jan Luiten van Zanden. This group has established a strong reputation in its field, and specialises in research into the interaction between institutions and socio-economic development. A number of relatively large research projects – mainly funded by the Netherlands Science Foundation and other external funds (such as companies) – are carried out here.

At the intersection of these fields lies the economic history of the biological standard of living. Research into this field benefits from the University’s strengths in humanities such as, for example, archaeology and Asia studies, as well as its medical sciences which contribute to the natural science side of the data hub. The University of Tübingen is consistently ranked among the ten leading universities in Germany, and its Economic History Department has generated and supported younger scholars who now teach at universities around the world such as Oxford, Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Southampton, Shantou, Poznan, Dresden, and Bristol.

With over 20,000 students and 5,000 staff members it is one of the largest universities in the Netherlands. The Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC) was created in 1992 within the Economics Department by a group of researchers working on comparative analysis of levels of economic performance and differences in growth rates. The activities of the GGDC are primarily in the field of research and are largely based on a range of comprehensive databases on indicators of growth and development, which the GGDC compiles and maintains on a regular basis. Part of the centre’s work is carried out in collaboration with the Economics Program of The Conference Board, which among other things supports the GGDC Total Economy Data Base. The GGDC participates in various programmes funded by the European Commission. Since 2004 the Centre has coordinated the EU KLEMS project on comparative productivity at industry level in the European Union. This is part of the 6th Framework Programme, Priority 8, ‘Policy Support and Anticipating Scientific and Technological Needs’. Since 2005 members of the GGDC coordinate the project ‘An International Historical Database on Economic Growth and Development’, which is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. This projects aims to make available historical national accounting data for western Europe, North and South America, and East Asia. Since 2006 the members of the GGDC have participated in GlobalEuroNet, the ESF Research Networking Programme on European Economic History. GGDC is leader of the hub on national accounts.