Gagnasafni

Gagnasafni, the dative form of gagnasafn, is the Icelandic term for a data collection or dataset used in research, governance, and business. The concept denotes a structured assemblage of information designed for analysis, comparison, or reuse. A gagnasafni may reside in a file, a database, or a dedicated data repository and can cover a single study or multiple sources combined into a unified corpus.

Typically a gagnasafni comprises records (cases) and variables (fields), along with metadata describing provenance, variable definitions, units of measurement, and data quality. Data may be structured (tables in a database), semi-structured (JSON, XML), or unstructured (text documents, media), and may include derived variables or anonymized identifiers to support privacy.

Management aspects include data governance, access controls, licensing, and versioning. Ethical and legal considerations, such as privacy protection and compliance with applicable laws, are central. In Iceland, as in many jurisdictions, data handling must respect GDPR and national regulations on sensitive information.

Applications include statistical agencies publishing open data, universities sharing research datasets, and organizations building analytical pipelines. Common formats include CSV, JSON, XML, SQL dumps, and specialized formats for geographic or temporal data. Data repositories and data lakes may host gagnasöfn for reproducibility and transparency.

See also: gagnasafn (dataset), data repository, open data.