In 2013 the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) commissioned the institutions DIPF, GESIS, and IQB to develop strategies for saving and re-using research data generated in the BMBF Framework Programme for Empirical Educational Research. Now, the Alliance for Research Data in Education (Verbund Forschungsdaten Bildung, VerbundFDB) is the central contact for research data and research data management in educational science. It has been commissioned to archive research data as well as assessment instruments and to make these data and instruments available to the scientific community. This includes data from qualitative and quantitative studies, e.g. text data, video data, survey data, and achievement data. Moreover, VerbundFDB provides assessment instruments and documentation material, e.g. code books and scale documentations. A further priority is the training, consultation, and provision of information material on the topic of research data management. VerbundFDB offers the following services to researchers:

• Infrastructure and counselling concerning archiving and sharing research data and research instruments
• Provision of a central search engine for studies, data and assessment instruments from different data centres for secondary use
• Trainings, information material, and individual advice concerning research data management, for instance on data management plans, legal and ethical requirements in assessing and processing data, as well as data archiving.