The latest issue of DDI Directions was published on September 22nd. It includes reports on the NADDI 2016 conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and the Annual DDI meetings held in Bergen, Norway. The newsletter also highlights the contributions of DDI members engaged in working groups or committees, including the Marketing and Partnerships Group, the Training Group, the Technical Committee, and the Moving Forward project. Also in this issue is a new column, "ReadWrite-Execute (RWX)", written by Knut Wenzig (DIW Berlin), that will highlight both existing and new DDI and metadata-related publications produced by the DDI Community.
News
Welcome New Member: Consortium of Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA)
Submitted by lyle on Mon, 2016-08-29 00:08
The DDI Alliance welcomes the Consortium of Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) as a Full Member! Hossein Abroshan, Chief Technical Officer, is the Member Representative and the Scientific Representative.
Welcome New Members: mStats DS–Data Science and Statistical Software and University of Wisconsin Institute on Aging–MIDUS study
Submitted by lyle on Mon, 2016-08-29 00:00
The Alliance recently welcomed mStats DS – Data Science and Statistical Software (Marcel Hebing, representative) and the University of Wisconsin Institute on Aging – MIDUS study (Barry Radler, representative) as Associate Members.
Annual Meetings Held in Bergen, Norway
Submitted by lyle on Wed, 2016-06-01 00:25
The DDI Alliance Annual Meeting of Member Representatives and the Meeting of the Scientific Board were held on May 30 in Bergen, Norway, in advance of the IASSIST 2016 conference. The Annual Meeting of Member Representatives included a State of the Alliance presentation by Steve McEachern's (Chair of the Executive Board), as well as reports from theMarketing, Training, and Moving Forward groups; the Meeting of the Scientific Board included an activity report by the Technical Committee. Both meetings were well attended and productive.
Achim Wackerow and Michelle Edwards elected as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Scientific Board
Submitted by lyle on Mon, 2016-05-30 00:42
In May, elections were held for the positions of Chair and Vice-Chair of the Scientific Board. Achim Wackerow (GESIS) was elected as Chair, with Michelle Edwards (CISER) elected as Vice-Chair. The Scientific Board: 1. Contributes to the substantive content of DDI standards and semantic products and approve major version revisions. 2. Evaluates technical proposals through the Alliance standards review process. 3. Undertakes research and testing concerning proposals for DDI standards and semantic products. 4. Develops and promulgates best practices for use of DDI standards and semantic products. 5. Assesses progress and barriers to progress. 6. Suggests future directions and activities for the Alliance. The Technical Committee is a standing committee of the Scientific Board. The Scientific Board also has direct oversight of the Moving Forward project (DDI4).
NADDI 2016 Report
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2016-04-14 00:04
With 75 registered participants representing 34 organizations, many of whom were new to the DDI community, the 4th Annual North American DDI Conference was held in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada April 7-8. The Health Research Data Repository hosted the event, supported by the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta.
The conference program of 15 presentations and 4 workshops reflected a wide variety of potential and practical uses of DDI within the social science community and beyond, such as helping to drive a new health data ecosystem, managing heterogeneous longitudinal weather data, and addressing the needs of geospatial data and time-based media. Keynote addresses were given by Dr. Lawrence Richer, Associate Director of the Women and Children's Health Research Institute, and Dr. Larry Hoyle ("The Evolution of DDI - Concepts and Technology"), Senior Scientist at the University of Kansas Institute for Policy & Social Research. In addition to the program, Colectica and Nooro Online Research partnered to provide a demonstration of DDI's interoperability by creating, distributing, and documenting the conference's feedback survey in real-time.
NADDI 2017 will be held at Ithaca, New York on April 5-7, 2016.
DDI Directions newsletter published
Submitted by lyle on Sun, 2016-02-07 21:45
The latest issue of DDI Directions was published on February 3rd. It includes a review of the successful EDDI 2015 conference in Denmark, as well as a reminder about the upcoming NADDI conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. There are a lot of exciting DDI 4.0 activities announced in the newsletter, including DDI-Views, a report from the recent Copenhagen Sprint, and a save-the-date notice for the April Sprint at NADDI.
Thanks go to Kelly Chatain for putting together this newsletter and to all of the hardworking people who support DDI and are helping to spread its adoption.
http://www.ddialliance.org/system/files/ddi-directions-2016-02.pdf
New Alliance Members: Statistics Denmark and Nooro Online Research
Submitted by lyle on Sun, 2016-02-07 21:38
The DDI Alliance recently welcomed Statistics Denmark as a Full Member. Mogens Grosen Nielsen, Chief Adviser, Head of Metadata, will be the Member Representative.
The Alliance also recently welcomed Nooro Online Research as an Associate Member.
Welcome, Statistics Denmark and Nooro Online Research!
Upcoming DDI4 Sprints
Submitted by lyle on Wed, 2016-01-27 18:28
We are planning the next DDI4 sprint for the week of April 11-15 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (the week after NADDI). The goal of the sprint is to complete a consistency review of the DDI4 modeling, particularly reviewing consistent use of patterns. If you can participate in the sprint (either in person or virtually), please contact Jared Lyle (lyle@umich.edu). More information will be posted here: https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DDI4/Sprints.
Another sprint is planned for the week of May 23-27 (the week before IASSIST). Details of this sprint, including goals and specific location in Norway, are under development.
NADDI 2016 Call for Abstracts
Submitted by lyle on Wed, 2015-12-16 17:33
NADDI 2016: Document, Discover, and Interoperate (April 6-8th, 2016)
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
The North American DDI (NADDI) user conference provides opportunities for all who are actively using or are interested in learning about this community-developed metadata standard for observational research data. This is a conference to come together, connect, and learn from one another. NADDI 2016 will be a three-day conference consisting of hands-on workshops (April 6) and both invited and contributed presentations (April 7 & 8). These events will be of interest to a broad community, including research and data professionals in the social and health sciences and other disciplines, and at all levels of expertise, from novice to expert.
This year’s conference theme is ‘Document, Discover, and Interoperate’.
The full power of DDI is exhibited through its applications in documenting, discovering, and interoperating data. These are activities that sustain the flow of vital information throughout a research project. Through the use of DDI, this research information is defined, identified, structured so that it can be shared predictably with other applications or be machine-actionable.
Important Dates!
- Abstract submission closes - January 15, 2016
- Notification of abstract acceptance - January 29, 2016
- Presenter's deadline to register - March 18, 2016
- Early rate registration closes - March 18, 2016
- Registration deadline - March 28, 2016
Given the theme of this year’s NADDI conference, we are looking for submissions that will fit into the following four categories:
1) Repository Platforms and Metadata;
2) Metadata Production Systems;
3) Discovery Platforms;
4) Interoperability.
The hosts of this year’s NADDI conference are the Health Research Data Repository (https://uofa.ualberta.ca/
For more information please visit the conference website at: http://naddiconf.org/2016/
For immediate inquiries or additional information at this time please contact the conference Chair, James Doiron (jdoiron@ualberta.ca).