Research data management has become an important global issue as funding agencies, publishers, and disciplines increasingly require the sharing of publicly funded data. The Open Data movement treats curated data as a valuable resource available to support new research with the potential for new discoveries. Furthermore, the expectation that research findings can be replicated is pressuring researchers to make their data understandable and useable by others. Both the replication and reuse of research data is highly dependent on properly documented data. The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) provides two structured metadata specifications for describing the content and context of data about individuals or organizations (microdata) in the health, social, and behavioural sciences. This community-maintained standard for microdata is internationally recognized as a best practice in preparing, sharing, and preserving data.
The Keynote Speaker for the conference is Ann Green. Ann is an independent research consultant focusing on the digital lifecycle of scholarly resources, including their creation, delivery, management, long-term stewardship, and preservation. She has significant history and experience with the DDI, serving on the original DDI committee in 1995 and coauthoring the first DDI specification.
The conference will feature training sessions on Monday, March 31, and an opening reception that evening. Monday's training will cover an introduction to DDI in the morning and the use of DDI to document health-related data in the afternoon. Conference sessions focus on a wide range of innovative topics and projects -- from field-testing multilingual clinical assessments using DDI to chaining together existing DDI tools to documenting qualitative data.
We hope to see you there!