How Initiative Benefits the Research Community - the Data Documentation Initiative

This paper describes the development, establishment and adoption of an international XML-based standard for the content, presentation, transport, and preservation of documentation for datasets in the social and behavioural sciences. It illustrates how that standard benefits the whole social science community and how that community has influenced, and is still influencing, the development of the standard. In particular, the paper highlights the parallel development of a European social science data publishing and statistical browsing tool that has utilized the standard. The paper concludes with a brief insight into the deliberations of one of the working groups set up by the project’s Steering Committee and the possible future directions for this effort.