The University of Antwerp is responsible for Work Package 4 which builds up expertise regarding existing datasets and historical printed serial sources on publicly traded companies from 1815 and on data documentation standards.
WP 4 compiled an inventory (D4.2) of the principal official publications of company information, stock exchange price lists and yearbooks with summary governance and financial information on publicly traded companies for each of the participating countries, as well as existing datasets for financial history. The inventory also provides a summary description of their contents. Another report on data and sources semantics (D4.3) contextualises the categories of information commonly found in stock exchange yearbooks and price lists. It does so by providing clear definitions and a detailed, historical overview of legislation, regulation and customs in the fields of company identification, corporate governance, securities trading and financial reporting. The output of WP 4 also includes two reports on metadata standards (D4.1 and D4.5). Metadata is defined by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) as “data that defines and describes other data” or, simply, “data about data”. The metadata standards from the Data Documentation Alliance (DDI) will be used in EURHISFIRM for describing the provenance, characteristics, structure and contents of datasets and printed sources in a structured and uniform manner. A selection of stock exchange price lists and yearbooks were documented according to the DDI standards with the Colectica software (D4.4). Other Work Packages will draw on this output for the elaboration of a common metadata model (Work Package 5), data connecting and matching technologies (Work Package 6) and a system for automated data extraction (Work Package 7).
