News

Invitation to participate in a joint Technical Committee and DDI 4 Development sprint to be held at DIW Berlin, November 26-30, 2018

Dear DDI Community,

This year we are very pleased to invite you to participate in a joint Technical Committee and DDI 4 Development sprint to be held at DIW Berlin, November 26-30, 2018. Participation is open to the entire DDI community and is a great opportunity to contribute to the DDI standard. We would like to encourage everyone to consider participating, even if you are unable to attend all five days.

The work will fall into the following two, concurrent tracks with exchanges and joint sessions planned where appropriate and as needed:  

DDI Roadmap

  • Finalization of 3.3 based on review

  • Prepare COGS to accept 3.3 schema content and generate output

    • XML schema (this would be a future version)

    • UML model of 3.3 to reflect Moving Forward approach

    • Documentation infrastructure

    • OWL/RDF output

  • Evaluate differences between 3.3 and output from COGS

  • Transition paths between versions across DDI

DDI 4 Moving Forward Project

  • High-level and conceptual discussion on the direction of DDI 4 regarding content and modeling

  • Review of post-prototype issues and prototype public release feedback

    • Role of UML

      • Use of UML features

      • Refinement of modeling rules

    • Binding transformation rules

    • Role of Canonical XMI as an expression of the model

  • Plans for new production framework (COGS)

    • Production process entering content and COGS production line

    • Clarification of validation checks for entered content

  • Creation of an iteration cycle regarding modeling, representations, and prototype software implementation to ensure a robust specification on all of these levels.

  • Creation of validation suites on all of these levels and integration into the production framework

  • Structured documentation

Location and Travel Information for DIW Berlin.

Please let us know if you are interested in joining us, even if not confirmed, and RSVP using this form by October 7, 2018. For questions, please contact Kelly Chatain (kchatain@umich.edu). Note that there is a limited amount of funding available for the meeting.  Funding guidelines and the request form are available online.

Thank you for considering this invitation and we look forward to meeting with you at Berlin!

Next Annual Meeting of Member Representatives: 1 June 2019 in Sydney, Australia

The DDI Executive Board recently selected the date for the next Annual Meeting of Member Representatives.  The meeting will be held on Saturday, 1 June 2019, in Sydney, Australia (directly after the IASSIST Annual Conference, 27-31 May 2019, also to be held in Sydney).  

The Annual Meeting of Member Representatives provides a forum for member discussion and feedback.  Please save the date.  We look forward to seeing many member representatives at the meeting.  

Public Review of DDI 3.3 -- extended

The Public Review period of DDI 3.3 has been extended through September 21, 2018. We thank those who have already submitted comments.

Links to the specification and instructions for comment are found at:
 

For questions or requests, please contact Wendy Thomas, Chair, DDI Technical Committee (wlt@umn.edu). 

DDI articles in the latest issue of the IASSIST Quarterly

Two articles in the latest issue of the IASSIST Quarterly (Vol 42 No 2 (2018)) discuss DDI. "Flexible DDI Storage," the winner of the IASSIST 2017 conference paper competition, describes "a way to model the binding of DDI to applications in a way that it works independent of most version changes and interpretative differences in a standard like DDI without continuous reimplementation." The other article, "Elaborating a Crosswalk Between Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and Encoded Archival Description (EAD) for an Emerging Data Archive Service Provider," describes a DDI-to-EAD crosswalk at the State Archives of Belgium.

More details: https://www.iassistquarterly.com/index.php/iassist/issue/view/3

New DDI 3.3 specification available for public review and comment

The DDI Alliance (http://www.ddialliance.org/) is pleased to announce the Public Review of DDI 3.3. This version of the DDI specification includes important updates and new content, including:

  • Classification management (based on GSIM/Neuchatel) 
  • Non-survey data collection (Measurements)
  • Sampling
  • Weighting
  • Questionnaire Design
  • Support for DDI as a Property Graph
  • Quality Statement improvements (useful for Eurostat reporting)

Additionally, DDI 3.3 has a formal model now, so a detailed changelog can be generated between DDI 3.2 and 3.3.

Links to the specification and instructions for comment are found at: https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DDI4/pages/500826115/DDI+Lifecycle+3.3+Public+Review

We are eager to obtain feedback from the DDI and RDF communities on this vocabulary. The comment period is open for six weeks until August 3, 2018, and we hope to hear from you!

DDI Train the Trainer workshop to be hosted by GESIS in September

GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences will host a DDI Train the Trainer workshop in September. Interested in gaining a deeper knowledge of DDI through creating training materials? Apply by July 22! Participants promise to teach a DDI workshop within the next year. More details: https://training.gesis.org/?site=pDetails&child=full&pID=0x26080C184C484597AE6AE43CD648B277

DDI Alliance on Twitter

The DDI Alliance is now on Twitter!  Follow us: https://twitter.com/DDIalliance

Welcome New Member: Aristotle Cloud Services

The DDI Alliance welcomes Aristotle Cloud Services as an Associate Member of the Alliance. Sam Spencer is the respresentative.

Call for Papers for the 10th Annual European DDI User Conference (EDDI18)

CALL FOR PAPERS

10th Annual European DDI User Conference (EDDI18), DDI - The Basis of Managing the Data Life Cycle

  • Submission DeadlineSeptember 2, 2018
  • Place: Berlin, Germany
  • Date: December 4/5, 2018
  • Host:  The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at DIW Berlin Germany
  • Conference web page: http://www.eddi-conferences.eu/eddi18

EDDI18 is organized jointly by SOEP - The German Socio-Economic Panel, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and IDSC of IZA - International Data Service Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor.

The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) is an international standard for describing the data produced by surveys and other observational methods in the social, behavioral, economic, and health sciences.

The meeting will bring together DDI users and professionals from all over Europe and the world. Anyone interested in developing, applying, or using DDI is invited to attend and present.

For more information, see the conference web site at http://www.eddi-conferences.eu/eddi18.

DDI Alliance Annual Meeting - Agenda

The DDI annual meeting will be held Monday, May 28, 2018, in room LB-362 of the Webster Library, 1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal, Canada. The meeting agenda is available at:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1czVlCiWn3RXQtFJL7ZM7itKFvrVpxwroD727y5tQJV0/edit#

Coffee will start at 8:30 am and the meeting will start at 9 am. The morning will be devoted to the Meeting of Members and the afternoon to the meeting of the Scientific Board with lunch provided in between.

For those who cannot attend the annual meeting in person, we are providing a virtual connection.  To join the meeting virtually:

https://bluejeans.com/933112161

To join via phone :

1)  Dial:

+1.888.240.2560 (US Toll Free)

(see all numbers - http://bluejeans.com/numbers)

2)  Enter Conference ID : 933112161