Dear DDI community,
We are happy to announce the creation of the RDF equivalence working group. An implementation languages workshop was held in Paris in December of 2022. One of the recommendations that came out of that meeting was to create a list of metadata item types used across various DDI products. The common equivalent classes from the various RDF representations of DDI products including SDTL, XKOS, the next DDI Lifecycle version, and the upcoming DDI CDI could also be mapped to this list. Mappings to vocabularies created outside the DDI Alliance, such as schema.org, may also be looked into.
The initial work of this new group is to create a mapping of the most used common classes across the DDI products, defined using the owl equivalentClass.The current plan is to record these mappings using the Simple Standard for Sharing Ontological Mappings (SSSOM) [1]. SSSOM will provide a standard framework for recording the equivalences and provides tooling to generate the OWL reified axioms. The working group may expand to include OWL equivalentProperty mappings if it is found to be useful.
The group is seeking volunteers interested in RDF or that have DDI content expertise. If you are interested in joining this new working group, please let us know. We plan to schedule a kickoff meeting based on everyone’s availability.
Thanks,
Dan, Christophe, Flavio, and Wendy
[1]https://github.com/mapping-
https://mapping-commons.github
News
Call for Participation: New RDF Equivalence Working Group
European DDI Users Conference (EDDI): 27-29 November
The 15th European DDI Users Conference will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia from 27-29 November 2023. The conference is being generously hosted by the Slovenian Social Science Data Archives (ADP).
Details of how to register are at: https://events.geant.org/
There will be 2 workshops/tutorials on the Monday followed by 35 presentations on the Tuesday/Wednesday from a wide range of organisations and individuals on all things DDI, and related issues.
The draft program is available at: https://events.geant.org/
Details of getting to the venue and accommodation are available at: https://events.geant.org/
We look forward to welcoming you to Ljubljana.
Mari Kleemola & Jon Johnson
EDDI 2023 co-chairs
DDI Meet and Greet for World Preservation Day on November 2, 16:00 UTC
For DDI training contact us here: https://ddialliance.org/
Scheduled Website Maintenance: October 21-22
The DDI Alliance website will be offline (unavailable) for several minutes at one or more points between 11 p.m. Saturday, October 21 and 4 a.m. Sunday, October 22 Eastern Time Zone. The websites may be offline for longer during that time window if a problem unexpectedly occurs.
For more information about the scheduled maintenance, please see: https://status.its.umich.edu/report.php?id=157593.
CODATA / DDI training webinar ‘The DDI Standards and Technology: Adapting to Change’, 17 October at 1400 UTC
Registration is now open – please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/
The technology landscape is always changing, and with the advent of AI technologies the pace has increased. This webinar looks at the technologies and practices around DDI metadata today, and how the new technologies could be used to increase efficiencies in the work of documenting data and in the use of the data itself. There will be time for questions and answers.
Current examples of production flows for metadata will be shown, covering the DDI Codebook and DDI Lifecycle standards, and the possibilities for leveraging ChatGPT and similar technologies demonstrated. The webinar is intended for data managers and disseminators concerned with documenting data and producing metadata at scale.
Our speakers are:
I. DDI and Technology Evolution (from DTDs for documentation to metadata-driven systems – brief overview) (Arofan Gregory, DDI/CODATA)
II. Production of DDI Codebook metadata for ODESI (Alex Cooper, Data Services Coordinator at Queen's University)
III. Production of DDI Lifecycle at the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA) (Jennifer Zeiger, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)
IV. ChatGPT and Metadata – possible uses and enhancements in efficiency (Pascal Heus, AI / Data Lead and FAIR Open Data APIs advocate, Postman Open Technologies)
The webinar is free to attend but registration is required. Please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/
We look forward to seeing you on 17 October!
Re-establishing the DDI Marketing Group and seeking new leadership
Dear DDI community,
At the May DDI Annual meeting, the Executive Board was charged with re-establishing the Marketing Working Group. We are writing to keep members informed about progress and to find new leadership for the working group.
The Alliance has undergone significant changes over the last 5 years, and it is evident that our Marketing challenge is moving from a situation where we support three mature products (DDI-Codebook, DDI Controlled Vocabularies and DDI-Lifecycle) to one where we now support two additional products (XKOS and STDL) and future products, such as DDI-CDI.
We strongly believe that it is time to take stock of this new landscape, better understand the current and future needs of our membership and of the wider community we support, and assist the Executive Board in helping to prioritise the Marketing effort as part of a wider review of our future strategic plan.
In order to achieve this, the Executive Board has drafted a new mission statement for the Marketing Working Group, which includes:
- Market Identification and Audiences
- Highlight DDI Strengths for Each Audience, and
- DDI Promotion to Different Audiences.
We are now making a call for a person(s) with significant marketing experience from the DDI and/or data management community to lead this new work as part of a revitalised Marketing Working Group. The Executive Board is able to provide funding to support this role should it be required.
Please contact secretariat@ddialliance.org if you are interested or have questions.
Jon Johnson
Chair, Executive Board
Registration is open for the European DDI Conference 2023
We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for the 15th European DDI Users Conference, to be held in Ljubljana from 27-29 November 2023. The conference is being generously hosted by the Slovenian Social Science Data Archives (ADP).
Details of how to register are at: https://events.geant.org/
There will be 2 workshops/tutorials on the Monday followed by 35 presentations on the Tuesday/Wednesday from a wide range of organisations and individuals on all things DDI, and related issues.
The draft program is available at: https://events.geant.org/
Details of getting to the venue and accommodation are available at: https://events.geant.org/
We look forward to welcoming you to Ljubljana.
Mari Kleemola & Jon Johnson
EDDI 2023 co-chairs
Call for Papers: European DDI Conference (26-29 November 2023)
EDDI 2023 is organized jointly by the Slovenian Social Science Data Archive (ADP), GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and IDSC of IZA - International Data Service Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor.
It will be hosted by ADP in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from Monday 27 to Wednesday 29 November 2023. Online participation will also be available for those unable to travel.
- Tutorials and Workshops: Monday 27 November 2023
- Conference: Tuesday 28 November - Wednesday 29 November 2023
- Side Meetings: Thursday 30 November - Friday 1 December 2023
Proposal Submission
We are seeking presentations, talks, papers on all things DDI:
- Case Studies
- Mature implementations
- Early Implementations
- Interplay of DDI with other standards or technologies
- Projects in early phases in which DDI is under consideration
- Critiques of DDI
Submission Deadline: 4 September 2023
Details of how to submit a proposal are at: https://bit.ly/eddi2023
Diversity Scholarship
This year, EDDI is able offer a diversity scholarship as we aim to increase the diversity within the conference, especially among the speakers. The program is open to any underrepresented group within the EDDI community. Further details are at: https://events.geant.org/
Jon Johnson & Mari Kleemola
EDDI 2023 co-chairs
DDI Executive Board and Scientific Board Election Results
We are happy to report the outcome of the July DDI election. Libby Bishop and Johan Fihn Marberg were elected to the Executive Board. Darren Bell, Dan Smith, and Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen were elected to the Scientific Board.
Special thanks to all candidates for their willingness to contribute to the growth and development of the DDI Alliance. Biographies and position statements are listed directly below.
Libby Bishop
Biosketch
Biosketch
Darren Bell has worked at UK Data Archive for eleven years, firstly as a data modeler/developer and latterly as Director of Technical Services since the beginning of 2020. He is currently acting PI for the UK Data Service. Prior to 2012, he worked in a variety of roles in both global infrastructure and development in both the public and commercial sectors. His particular technical interests are in linked data, cloud platforms and semantic web and and and latterly the automation and better expression of traditionally administrative practices like access and rights management. His experience with DDI extends back to 2.1 and 3.1 and more recently, championing the implementation of DDI-CDI at the Archive, as a key technology in enabling real-world data integration.
Position Statement
Biosketch
Dan has been a member of the DDI Technical Committee since 2006. Since 2014 he has helped to create the DDI Structured Data Transformation Language (SDTL). He helped design and create the DDI Agency Registry and resolution service. Since 2017 Dan has led the team that created the Convention-based Ontology Generation System (COGS) that is used to author DDI's SDTL standard and upcoming versions of DDI Lifecycle. He has worked on the releases of DDI codebook 2.5 and DDI Lifecycle 3.0 through 3.3.
Position Statement
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 1996. He took part in some 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, and included it into some software applications and standardization projects. These topics were also covered by presentations at IASSIST and EDDI conferences. For several years, he has also been a member of the programme committee of the European DDI User Conference (EDDI). https://www.gesis.org/en/institute/staff/person/wolfgang.zenk-moeltge
2023 DDI Executive Board and Scientific Board Candidates
Dear DDI community,
I am pleased to announce the candidates for the 2023 DDI Executive Board and Scientific Board elections. The Executive Board has two seats eligible for election, while the Scientific Board has three seats eligible. The candidates include (listed in alphabetical order):
Executive Board (link to bios and position statements)
- Libby Bishop (currently serving)
- Johan Fihn Marberg
Scientific Board (link to bios and position statements)
- Darren Bell (currently serving)
- Noemi Betancort
- Amber Leahey
- Shane McChesney
- Dan Smith
- Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen (currently serving)
In the next day, designated member representatives will receive an online ballot to vote. The online ballot will close on Monday, July 31.
Thanks to all candidates for their willingness to contribute to the growth and development of the DDI Alliance.
Sincerely,
Jared Lyle
Executive Director, DDI Alliance