News | Page 21 | Data Documentation Initiative

DDI Alliance to Meet in Lawrence, Kansas on 22 May

Submitted by lyle on Wed, 2017-05-17 01:00

The DDI Alliance will hold its annual meeting on Monday, May 22, 2017, in the Big 12 Room of the University of Kansas Memorial Union in Lawrence, Kansas (the day before the start of the IASSIST conference). 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. As in previous years, in most cases it will be the same person attending both meetings, but do feel free to send different people.

The agenda for the meeting is available at:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JBGgZG309kRD3zlxg5vvCtn_WcZkmQLw9apfy0iL4r0/edit#heading=h.dbe82sdcd9p5

Welcome New Member: University of Wisconsin Institute on Aging - MIDUS study

Submitted by lyle on Wed, 2017-05-10 14:43

The DDI Alliance welcomes the University of Wisconsin Institute on Aging - MIDUS study (Barry Radler, representative) as a Full Member! They were previously an Associate Member of the Alliance.

Welcome New Member: Statistics Estonia

Submitted by lyle on Tue, 2017-05-09 14:54

The DDI Alliance welcomes Statistics Estonia (Kaia Kulla, representative) as an Associate Member!

NADDI Conference Held in Ithaca, New York

Submitted by lyle on Tue, 2017-05-02 09:27

NADDI2017, the 5th Annual North American DDI User Conference, took place December 5-7, 2016, in Ithaca, New York. The conference was hosted by the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER) and The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

The conference program included 15 presentations, 7 posters, and 2 workshops. The keynote address was given by Dr. Peter Enns ("Why We Need Survey Data and Data Archives to Understand Mass Incarceration").

DDI Training Group looking for help creating how-to videos

Submitted by lyle on Thu, 2017-03-16 03:05

The DDI Alliance Training Group is creating short how-to videos about frequently asked topics, such as "What is DDI?", "How can you use DDI to document questionnaires?", and "How can you use DDI for repeated data management?" The goal is to make DDI more understandable to potential users, especially by showcasing practical applications.

The group is looking for assistance from the DDI community.

If you are interested in joining the working group, please contact the chair, Amber Leahey (amber.leahey@utoronto.ca).
If you have suggestions about video topics, please add them to this online spreadsheet.
If you have existing presentations you think would be worth turning into a short video presentation, please let Amber or the Training Group know.

New DDI Working Group: DDI Workflows for Dataverse

Submitted by lyle on Fri, 2017-03-03 02:03

A new working group, DDI Workflows for Dataverse, has been created to develop use cases for improved support of DDI in the Dataverse repository platform, and to coordinate development projects that utilize DDI generated by or with Dataverse in support of research data across the lifecycle. The chairs of the working group are Amber Leahey (Scholars Portal) and Danny Brooke (IQSS, Harvard University).

February 2017 DDI Directions (Volume XV, Number 1) published

Submitted by lyle on Thu, 2017-02-16 23:00

The latest edition of DDI Directions, the quarterly DDI Alliance newsletter, has been published. In this issue:

Save the Date: DDI Alliance to Meet in Lawrence, Kansas in May
New Member Elected to DDI Alliance Executive Board
Call for Papers for NADDI 2017, April 6-7 (PreConference workshop April 5)
8th Annual EDDI Conference Held in Cologne, December 2016
Public Review of XKOS
RWX: Top Impact Publications from the Last 20 Years

NADDI 2017 Call for Papers

Submitted by lyle on Tue, 2017-01-10 22:55

The 5th Annual North American DDI (NADDI) Conference will be held April 6-7 in Ithaca, NY on the beautiful campus of Cornell University! NADDI workshops will be held on 5 April. The theme for this year’s conference, “Metadata Across the Research Data Lifecycle," emphasizes the benefits of metadata creation early in the research data lifecycle, as well as its subsequent re-use throughout.

Aimed at individuals working in and around data and metadata, NADDI 2017 seeks submissions of presentations and posters that highlight the use of DDI and other metadata standards within research projects, survey operations, academic libraries, and data archives. We also invite proposals that address the increasing need for interoperability of standards in research data management and the leveraging of DDI to facilitate data discovery and data integration. Presentations of an applied nature are encouraged—how are you working with DDI and metadata generally within the larger framework of research data management and the research data lifecycle? Submissions of a more technical nature are also encouraged, as well as presentations on the DDI standard itself and its continued development. Please contact NADDI2017@gmail.com with ideas for workshops.

For further details about the conference, please visit http://naddiconf.org. The deadline for submissions is January 31.

Public Review of XKOS

Submitted by lyle on Tue, 2017-01-03 16:05

The DDI Alliance is pleased to announce the Public Review of XKOS, an RDF Vocabulary which extends the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) for the needs of statistical classifications. It does so in two main directions. First, it defines a number of terms that enable the representation of statistical classifications with their structure and textual properties, as well as the relations between classifications. Second, it refines SKOS semantic properties to allow the use of more specific relations between concepts. Those specific relations can be used for the representation of classifications or for any other case where SKOS is employed. XKOS adds the extensions that are desirable to meet the requirements of the statistical community.

Links to the specification and instructions for comment are found at http://www.ddialliance.org/Specification/RDF/XKOS. We are eager to obtain feedback from the DDI and RDF communities on this vocabulary. The comment period is open until February 15, 2017, and we hope to hear from you.

Review of Q2 2016 Development Draft of DDI 4 - Extended Review Period

Submitted by lyle on Thu, 2016-12-22 11:30

After discussing the review of the DDI-Views Q2 Development Review with attendees at EDDI 2016, the Technical Committee has decided to extend the review period to 15 January 2017. Please note that the PDF version of the documentation is now available. The Comment and Review Page is found at

https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DDI4/DDI+4+-+Comment+and+Review and provides general information on the purpose of these reviews. The link to the specific page for the Q2 2016 review is found in the red box in the upper right corner of the page. If you have questions or need additional time to complete your review, please contact Wendy Thomas, Chair of the Technical Committee.