News

The DDI Alliance is proud to announce the release of a promotional "Introduction to DDI Metadata" video that highlights how DDI products and standards support FAIR data principles. The video -- about 90 seconds long -- is meant to grab attention and generate interest in DDI,. Please reuse it, widely!

Many thanks to: Kristi Winters and GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, who produced and narrated the video; the DDI Marketing and Partnerships working group, which initiated and coordinated the development; and the DDI Training working group for input on content.

Workshops held at Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics have been an important activity for the DDI Alliance and many of its partner and member organizations over the years. Since 2018, CODATA has collaborated closely on a series of workshops looking at cross-domain interoperability based on DDI and other metadata standards. 

Since 2007, members of the DDI community have organized twenty-eight workshops on different topics related to DDI and metadata, with a total of 548 participants over that time (see detailed list of workshops). These workshops have made a critical contribution to the DDI Alliance’s work program including the development of new versions of the specification, training activities, and coordination with relevant standards bodies. 

More recently, the workshops have explored issues that are fundamental to the objectives and methodology of the CODATA Decadal Programme ‘Making Data Work for Global Grand Challenges’. This includes identifying ways of improving the interoperability of metadata standards and testing solutions against real-world case studies. DDI standards have played a significant role in this work and the development of DDI Cross Domain Integration (DDI-CDI) represents an important step forward.

Always, in keeping with the mission of Schloss Dagstuhl, these events have focused on the forward-looking aspects of DDI specifications from a computer science perspective, whether they addressed development, support, implementation, or inter-standards collaboration. Dagstuhl is a unique facility, providing an immersive environment that enables intensive and productive work. This has helped create a network of DDI users and metadata experts which is the excellent basis of further cooperation and exchange beyond the workshops in Dagstuhl. Furthermore, workshops have historically resulted from a partnership between several organizations, with GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, the DDI Alliance, and CODATA being the most important of these. All have provided not only their expertise to the workshops, but financial resources as well, to facilitate travel and similar expenses for participants. 

The current focus is on the relationship between DDI specifications and the emerging set of FAIR-enabling standards and specifications. At the heart of the European Commission-funded WorldFAIR project are eleven domain and cross-domain case studies: these will form an important part of the workshop activity in the near-term and are test cases for the emerging cross-domain interoperability framework. While DDI-CDI is the most obvious point of connection, DDI Lifecycle and DDI Codebook also fit into this picture as exemplary domain standards. Other DDI Alliance specifications such as XKOS (Extended Knowledge Organization System) and SDTL (Structured Data Transformation Language) are also relevant.

Due to COVID, many Dagstuhl seminars have been postponed, and this year the DDI-CODATA team has only been able to confirm a single week (August 28-September 2) because of scheduling requirements at Schloss Dagstuhl. We will return to having two workshops from 2023, and dates have been approved for the weeks September 24-29 and October 1-6. The working titles are ‘Defining a core metadata framework for cross-domain data sharing and reuse’ and ‘DDI-CDI: Realising interoperable data services in the metadata ecosystem’ respectively. 

The preliminary description of the 2022 workshop on ‘Interoperability for Cross-Domain Research: Machine-Actionability & Scalability’ is currently being used to recruit experts for the workshop.

We look forward to continuing what has been a fruitful collaboration, and will provide information regarding our planning activities in reports like this one moving forward. Schloss Dagstuhl has always provided a unique and highly effective venue for us to focus on forward-looking topics related to the DDI specifications, and we hope that this tradition will continue into the future.

The Dagstuhl Organizing Team:
Arofan Gregory, CODATA and DDI.
Hilde Orten, DDI and SIKT.
Joachim Wackerow.
Simon Cox, CODATA and CSIRO.
Simon Hodson, CODATA and DDI.
Steve McEachern, CODATA and DDI and ANU.

DDI member representatives voted in March 2022 to elect one member to fll Joachim (Achim) Wackerow's vacancy on the DDI Scientific Board. Seventeen of the 28 voting eligible DDI member representatives participated in the election. According to the Alliance Bylaws, the election is decided on the basis of those candidates getting the most votes.

The election results (number of votes are indicated in parentheses):

• Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen (16; one representative did not wish to vote)

The Scientific Board is composed of seven voting members elected by the Members of the Alliance. The Executive Director and the Chair of the Technical Committee are ex‐officio members, without internal vote. The Scientific Board may appoint up to two external Advisory Members, without internal vote. The Scientific Board is the scientific and technical body of the Alliance which represents the Scientific Community. The Scientific Board proposes the scientific work plan to the membership for approval and facilitates the scientific and technical work activities.

I want to thank Wolfgang for accepting the nomination and for his willingness to serve on the Board.  Wolfgang's biosketch and position statement are listed below.  I also want to thank Achim Wackerow for his many years of service to the DDI scientific community.

Sincerely,
Jared

Jared Lyle
Executive Director, DDI Alliance
ICPSR, University of Michigan

Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen

Biosketch

Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen is a researcher at GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany, and has been involved in DDI activities since his start at the Data Archive in the late 1990s. He took part in many of the annual DDI training and workshop series at Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics in Wadern, Germany, where he worked on further development of the standard and published several working papers together with colleagues from the DDI Alliance. Both at GESIS and within CESSDA, he has been actively promoting the DDI standard with database development and standardization projects. These topics were also covered by presentations at IASSIST and EDDI conferences. Wolfgang is also a member of the programme committee of the European DDI User Conference (EDDI).

Position Statement

As a Social Science researcher with some technical and Computer Science knowledge, I am concerned with providing practical solutions with a DDI standard that supports real world use cases. I like the promise of the DDI Alliance to cover the whole data life cycle of research data and to help organizations and individuals to collaborate on the basis of data and metadata. I am convinced that the combination of subject independent standards with standards that are designed to support subject specific research will help to create a vivid working environment for researchers using data and metadata as their basis of knowledge.

Register now! New webinar 28 March: DDI Working Together with Other Standards

The first webinar in the new series offered by CODATA and the DDI Alliance is now open for registration!
https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/1789729374315971088

Standards promote interoperability, transparency across agencies, and reduce development time. Systems used for the collection, management, production, and dissemination of data regularly employ several different standards for modelling and transmitting their data and metadata. DDI is often a core part of this suite, but it is rarely the only one.

The way in which DDI aligns and interacts with other standards has evolved over time: from a static, archival ‘XML codebook’, it has become a metadata resource for helping to drive systems and provide the basis for reuse and data harmonisation. Looking forward, DDI promises to support FAIR data in significant ways, as part of an integrated suite of standards.

This free webinar looks at the different DDI metadata standards and how they relate to both each other and to other models and standards in common use in applications today, including schema.org, DCAT, and Dublin Core. Speakers will include Alina Danciu (Sciences Po), Christophe Dzikowski (INSEE) and Arofan Gregory (CODATA). The session will be introduced by Geneviève Michaud (Sciences Po). There will be time for questions and answers, moderated by Adrian Dusa (University of Bucharest).

There is no fee to attend, but registration is required. We look forward to seeing you on 28 March!

Registration is open now at: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/1789729374315971088