Henry Schaefer

In Germany in many industries like machine building, chemical or automotive family-owned companies stand for above average R&D activities, high quality products, close ties with their customers and outstanding agility. Many of those companies are also well-known for long-lasting and valuable activities in corporate citizenship, mainly focused on their direct neighborhoods and particular stakeholders. The financial success of those companies is often grounded on their networks, as it is typical for the German automotive industry with their close ties to OEMs (see Schäfer and Baumann 2013, pp. 1–2). Since the economic role of such networks for the success of companies in general is well understood, the study of the relevance of stakeholder networks embedded in firm-specific understanding and practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the role of in such a way created social capital and especially the links to family-owned companies are just at the beginning and only few empirical studies on that issue exist.

Immunology researchers are beginning to explore the possibilities of reproducibility, reuse and secondary analyses of immunology data. Open-access datasets are being applied in the validation of the methods used in the original studies, leveraging studies for meta-analysis, or generating new hypotheses. To promote these goals, the ImmPort data repository was created for the broader research community to explore the wide spectrum of clinical and basic research data and associated findings. The ImmPort ecosystem consists of four components–Private Data, Shared Data, Data Analysis, and Resources—for data archiving, dissemination, analyses, and reuse. To date, more than 300 studies have been made freely available through the ImmPort Shared Data portal, which allows research data to be repurposed to accelerate the translation of new insights into discoveries.