Working Papers
The DDI Working Paper Series (ISSN 2153-8247) is intended as a dynamic publication avenue for authors working in the DDI space. Currently, the series includes papers on new and emerging themes as well as papers on best practices and use case literature.
If you are interested in publishing a paper to be part of the DDI Working Paper Series, please contact the DDI Alliance Director.
Best Practice: Data Life Cycle
Creating a DDI Profile
This document outlines recommended best practices for creating a local DDI 3.0 Profile, which is a subset of DDI 3.0 fields to be used by an organization or shared by a community of users.
DDI 3.0 Schemes
This best practice covers DDI publishing structures that promote reuse of common material by removing certain metadata content from the context of a specific study and publishing it for wider use.
Versioning and Publication
This best practice is designed to provide some guidelines to metadata creators and publishers about how to version metadata and publish it for others to use to comply with requirements for machine-actionability.
DDI as Content for Registries
This document defines registries and provides a justification for using them.
Management of DDI 3.0 Unique Identifiers
This best practice specifies the technical requirements and procedures for ensuring well-managed identifiers for both internal use and external references.
DDI 3.0 URNs and Entity Resolution
This document is a recommendation about appropriate architecture for the effective resolution of DDI URNs.
High-Level Architectural Model for DDI Applications
This best practices document looks at a possible architectural model to enable effective design of components that can be combined to create DDI applications.
Implementation and Governance
This best practice covers the process of developing agreements and guidelines for implementation and governance of DDI as a metadata scheme for a community.
Work flows - Data Discovery and Dissemination: User Perspective
This best practice escribes the best practices for metadata producers to provide end users with the resources for data discovery and dissemination.
Work flows - Archival Ingest and Metadata Enhancement
This Best Practice discusses workflows for DDI usage in the context of archival ingest and metadata enhancement, beginning at the point of the handoff between the data provider and the archive.
Work flows for Metadata Creation Regarding Recoding, Aggregation and Other Data Processing Activities
This best practice discusses the capturing, in DDI metadata, of the processes of data aggregation, recoding and data processing.
Controlled Vocabularies
The benefits of using controlled vocabularies, which offer consistency, precision, and interoperability, within DDI metadata creation are the primary underlying principles behind this best practice document.
Best Practice: Longitudinal
Documenting a Wider Variety of Data Using the Data Documentation Initiative 3.1
This paper is intended to provide implementers and those delivering longitudinal data with recommendations on how to use DDI most effectively to support the presentation of longitudinal studies, most commonly on the Web, and to describe best practice for structuring DDI instances.
Enabling Longitudinal Data Comparison Using DDI
This paper looks at the growing variety of data sources in research -- e.g., biomarkers -- that are not traditional question-based surveys, and how these can be usefully documented.
Generic Longitudinal Business Process Model
This paper looks at the unique characteristics of longitudinal data and offers recommendations for structuring metadata in a manner that facilitates analysis over time and metadata reuse.
Metadata for the Longitudinal Data Life Cycle
This paper proposes a reference model, the Generic Longitudinal Business Process Model (GLBPM), for the process of longitudinal data production and use, with an emphasis on the specification and management of the supporting metadata.
Presenting Longitudinal Studies to End Users Effectively Using DDI Metadata
This paper proposes best practice for the use of DDI to ensure that there are appropriate metadata to compare data produced across repeated data collection over time.