[DDI-users] DDI Directions Volume VIV, Number 4, November 2015

mcianna at umich.edu mcianna at umich.edu
Tue Nov 17 17:33:59 EST 2015


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 From the Former Director

This is the last issue of DDI Directions that I will produce as I will be  
retiring soon. One of the things I will miss the most in retirement is the  
supportive DDI community. It has been a true pleasure to know all of you  
and to work with you on the standard. Best of luck to DDI, to the Alliance,  
and to all of you who have contributed so much.

Mary Vardigan, Former Director, DDI Alliance, vardigan at umich.edu


 From the Director

This is the first issue of DDI Directions that I produce as Director. I  
look forward to engaging with the community; feel free to contact me  
directly with suggestions or questions (+1 734-763-6075 or lyle at umich.edu).

I have long admired how DDI facilitates discovery and interoperability of  
data, as well as the ambitious efforts of the community, including: the  
Moving Forward project (DDI4), outreach efforts to other metadata  
specifications, and user community meetings in Europe and North America, to  
name just a few.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the many contributions Mary Vardigan has  
made to the DDI community. Her support has been unflagging. Please read  
Chuck Humphrey's tribute to Mary, found on the last pages of this  
newsletter. We wish Mary all the best as she moves into retirement.

Jared Lyle, Director, DDI Alliance, lyle at umich.edu


In This Issue


New Website Launched
Update from the World Bank
EDDI Conference to Take Place in December
Colectica User Conference to be Held in Copenhagen after EDDI
Save the Date for NADDI!
DDI Annual Report Available
Call for Proposals for RC33 9th International Conference on Social Science  
Methodology
Call for Papers at 5th Biennial ACSPRI Social Science Methodology  
Conference 2016
Successful DDI Metadata Workshop Held at Dagstuhl
New DDI4 Production Workflow
There's Something about Mary

Volume VIV, Number 4, November 2015

New Website Launched

A redesigned DDI website with simpler navigation and a new look and feel  
was launched on Thursday, October 15. Kelly Chatain, Associate Archivist at  
Survey Research Operations, Institute for Social Research, University of  
Michigan, headed up the effort assisted by Michael Iannaccone (ICPSR), Olof  
Olsson (Swedish National Data Service), Stephanie Roth (Swedish National  
Data Service), Mary Vardigan (ICPSR), and Jing Wu (University of  
Mississippi). The DDI Marketing & Partnerships Group and the DDI Training  
Group also provided content suggestions and feedback.

DDI new website
DDI new website

Kelly notes that the website will continue to be enhanced and updated in a  
second phase of development that will focus on adding relevant content and  
cross-referencing functionality to improve access to that content. Some  
items on this list include:

Adding citation and DOI fields to all publications
Creating DDI social media feeds
Updating the DDI Lifecycle Diagram
Adding more materials to the new Training Library
Cross referencing Working Group, Committee, and Board members
Adding new conferences and presentations


We would like to enlist a few more site editors to contribute new content  
and update existing pages. If you would like to become a site editor,  
please let Kelly know.

Update from the World Bank

Olivier Dupriez, Lead Statistician at the World Bank, has provided an  
update on places around the world where DDI is now in use in government and  
other agencies (more than 60 countries) through the International Household  
Survey Network (IHSN). These locations are indicated on a new map on the  
website showing global DDI usage.

map showing global DDI usage
Map of global DDI usage

Olivier also reports that in September 2015, Mexico published a regulation  
in its "Diario Oficial de la Federacion" that made the DDI an official  
standard for statistical metadata. In addition, the IHSN's NADA application  
for creating data catalogs is being further enhanced and will become DDI-,  
Dublin Core-, and ISO 19139-compatible. Also, the Survey Solutions CAPI  
application developed by the World Bank has just released a new version  
that exports metadata in DDI format.

EDDI Conference to Take Place in December

EDDI15 will take place on December 2-3, 2015, in Copenhagen, Denmark, at  
the Royal School of Library and Information Science, University of  
Copenhagen. The conference, hosted by Statistics Denmark (DST) and  
DDA/National Archive of Denmark, will bring together DDI users and  
professionals from all over Europe and the world. Anyone interested in  
developing, applying, or using DDI is invited to attend. The program offers  
30 presentations and posters, 3 tutorials, and 4 side meetings.

The conference will open on Wednesday, December 2, at 9:00 am and close on  
Thursday, December 3, at 4:15 pm. Tutorials will take place on Tuesday,  
December 1, from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm. Two side meetings will take place on  
Friday, December 4 (the DDI Developers Meeting and the International  
Colectica User Conference).


The detailed draft program including abstracts is available at:  
http://www.eddi-conferences.eu/ocs/index.php/eddi/eddi15/schedConf/program
Registration for participants and accommodation booking are open:  
Registration:  
http://www.eddi-conferences.eu/ocs/index.php/eddi/eddi15/schedConf/registration
Accommodations:  
http://www.eddi-conferences.eu/ocs/index.php/eddi/eddi15/schedConf/accommodation#Accommodation

EDDI15 is organized jointly by DST - Statistics Denmark and the DDA -  
Danish Data Archive/National Archive of Denmark; GESIS - Leibniz Institute  
for the Social Sciences; and IDSC of IZA - International Data Service  
Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor.

Colectica User Conference to be Held in Copenhagen after EDDI

The second International Colectica User Conference (ICUC) will be held  
December 4 in Copenhagen and hosted by Statistics Denmark:

http://www.colectica.com/icuc2015

The theme this year will be "Colectica and DDI in Official Statistics."

ICUC is co-located with the 7th European DDI User Conference to provide  
four days of exciting content around the DDI metadata standard!


Dec 1st: DDI Workshops and Training
Dec 2nd: EDDI - Day 1
Dec 3rd: EDDI - Day 2
Dec 4th: ICUC 2015

Save the Date for NADDI!

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'.

In the coming weeks the conference website will be launched, followed by an  
official call for abstract submissions for those interested in presenting,  
submitting a poster, or offering a workshop on topics of interest. Given  
the theme of this year's NADDI conference, we are looking for submissions  
that will fit into the following four broad categories:


Repository Platforms and Metadata
Metadata Production Systems
Discovery Platform
Interoperability

The hosts of this year's NADDI conference are the Health Research Data  
Repository  
(https://uofa.ualberta.ca/nursing/research/research-supports-and-services/hrdr)  
and Faculty of Nursing Research Office of the University of Alberta.

For immediate inquiries or additional information at this time please  
contact James Doiron at: jdoiron at ualberta.ca

DDI Annual Report Available

The 2015 DDI Annual Report is now available.

DDI new website
DDI Annual Report

Call for Proposals for RC33 9th International Conference on Social Science  
Methodology

We are soliciting proposals for papers in the following session at the RC33  
9th International Conference on Social Science Methodology which is taking  
place in Leicester, England on September 11-15, 2016. The last Conference  
in 2012 had a session on metadata and was well received.

The scope for the session: "Recent Developments in Metadata Capture,  
Discovery and Harmonization in the Social Sciences"

This session invites presentations dealing with structured metadata in a  
standardized form across the survey life-cycle: models, systems, and tools  
for instrument design, data entry, data processing, maintaining data  
documentation, and capturing and storing the metadata within a repository  
for later reuse. There is increased interest in supporting the comparison  
and harmonization of studies/waves over space and time, and across studies,  
especially at the level of theoretical concepts, questions, and variables  
to which structured metadata is well suited.

Capturing metadata as early on in the survey life-cycle as possible in a  
structured way enhances transparency and quality and enables reproducible  
research and reuse of survey components for other waves or surveys.

A wide range of different products and services for different users can be  
generated on the basis of computer-processible metadata like web-based  
information systems, traditional codebooks, command setups for statistical  
packages, question banks, and searching and locating of data which assist  
in the use or interpretation of the data.

Papers are invited on, but not limited to, the following topics: reuse of  
metadata across space, time, and studies, metadata banks such as for  
questions and classifications, metadata-driven processes, and  
metadata-driven information systems, possibly using the major specification  
for social science metadata, DDI Lifecycle (DDI 3 branch of the Data  
Documentation Initiative). The session is aimed at survey designers and  
implementers, data and metadata managers, information system managers of  
cross-national surveys, metadata experts, and others.

To submit a paper abstract for the RC33 9th International Conference on  
Social Science Methodology, you should visit:  
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/sociology/research/rc33-conference. After  
landing on the homepage, navigate to 'Abstract Submission' and choose the  
session Jon Johnson and Joachim Wackerow.

Please note that the maximum length of abstracts is 5000 characters, and  
the deadline for the Call For Papers is Jan 12, 2016.

If you would like to discuss your proposal prior to submission please  
contact us at either of the email addresses below:


Jon Johnson, j.johnson at ioe.ac.uk, UCL Institute of Education,
Joachim Wackerow, joachim.wackerow at gesis.org, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for  
the Social Sciences

Call for Papers at 5th Biennial ACSPRI Social Science Methodology  
Conference 2016

Session: "The Role and Benefit of Metadata Capture, Discovery and  
Harmonization in Survey Research"

ACSPRI - Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research  
Incorporated

Theme: Social science in Australia: 40 years on

Conference dates: Tuesday July 19 - Friday July 22, 2016

Venue: The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Abstract/paper deadline: Friday March 4, 2016 (Abstract acceptance  
notification will be by Thursday, March 24, 2016. Full paper  
acceptance/notification will be by Friday April 29, 2016, after a peer  
review process.)

Registration opens: Friday March 4, 2016 (The early bird registration  
deadline is May 31, 2016)

Session description

This session invites presentations dealing with structured metadata in a  
standardized form across the data life-cycle: case studies, systems and  
tools for, eg, instrument design, data entry, data processing, maintaining  
data documentation, and capturing and storing the metadata within a  
repository for later re-use. Papers are invited on, but not limited to, the  
following topics: reuse of metadata across space, time, and studies;  
metadata banks such as for questions and classifications; and  
metadata-driven information systems, possibly using DDI Lifecycle (Data  
Documentation Initiative). The session is aimed at survey designers and  
implementers, data and metadata managers, information system managers of  
cross-national surveys, metadata experts, and others.

A unique feature of this conference is that it is multi-disciplinary and  
brings together researchers and methodologists from a range of environments  
and contexts.

Please note you are not required to submit a full paper for this  
conference. This is optional.


Details of sessions are available here:  
https://conference.acspri.org.au/index.php/conf/conference2016/schedConf/trackPolicies
Abstracts for papers will only be accepted through the online submission  
form available here:  
https://conference.acspri.org.au/index.php/conf/conference2016/schedConf/cfp
The conference website provides information about the conference, including  
key dates and deadlines, registration fees and submission guidelines  
available here:  
https://conference.acspri.org.au/index.php/conf/conference2016

If you would like to discuss your proposal prior to submission please  
contact Joachim Wackerow.

Successful DDI Metadata Workshop Held at Dagstuhl

A combined DDI Review and Sprint was held at Schloss Dagstuhl in Wadern,  
Germany, on October 19-23. Members of the DDI community developing the  
next-generation DDI specification met with seven experts knowledgeable  
about other metadata standards:


David Barraclough, Chair, SDMX Statistical Working group, OECD
Gary Berg-Cross, Research Data Alliance, Chair of Spatial Ontology  
Community of Practice
Michel Dumontier, Associate Professor, Stanford University
Martin Forsberg, ECRU Consulting
Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran, Research Lecturer, Oxford e-Research Centre,  
University of Oxford
Daniella Meeker, Director, Clinical Research Informatics, University of  
Southern California
Eric Prud'hommeaux, W3C Working Groups

DDI new website

The experts provided their views on the approach to the model-driven  
specification and gave freely of their time to offer advice and guidance  
about improvements and new directions. A formal report about the review  
will be available by the end of the year.

Progress on the model was made in the Data Description and Data Capture  
areas as well.

Dates for two Dagstuhl workshops in 2016 have also been confirmed: October  
17-24 and October 24-28, 2016.

New DDI4 Production Workflow

The DDI Technical Committee has implemented a new DDI4 production workflow  
using Bamboo, one of the Atlassian products. Bamboo is a continuous  
integration and delivery tool that ties automated builds, tests and  
releases together in a single workflow. The goal is to automate the  
production of publication packages to improve consistency and better manage  
the workflow within the Atlassian environment.

If you find bugs or identify areas of work, feel free to raise them either  
by emailing Sam or by raising a bug on Github.

There's Something about Mary

A tribute to the first director of the DDI Alliance, Mary Vardigan

By Chuck Humphrey

We have all benefited from Mary's steady leadership as Director of the DDI  
Alliance. The Alliance emerged from a research-funded project during the  
1990's into a community-based standards organization in 2002-2003. Mary has  
been part of these developments from the earliest days of DDI in 1995 to  
today's expanded Alliance operations, helping guide DDI through multiple  
specification and control vocabulary releases. Throughout this time, Mary's  
leadership has been critical to the success of the Alliance. Codebook and  
lifecycle specifications of DDI have grown to maturity and a new unified  
model is being readied. The coordination of the projects behind all of this  
work has fallen on the Director and it is here that we have witnessed the  
many gifts that Mary has as a leader.

A standards organization is bit of a Noah's ark, there are two of every  
kind of specialist. As Director, Mary has worked with a variety of  
technical specialists in defining, documenting, implementing, promoting,  
evaluating, and educating others about DDI specifications and products. For  
a community-based standards body to be productive, the contributors must be  
committed to the community. Mary's warm and welcoming style has established  
the perfect mix for the voluntary community making up the Alliance. She  
also has the ability to nudge people gently forward in completing their  
work. This is an important skill when working with volunteers.

Above all, Mary is an excellent communicator. She has a background in  
literature and is an avid reader. If you happen to encounter Mary  
travelling to a conference or a meeting, she will inevitably be reading a  
novel. But a scholar of literature or an active reader does not in itself  
make a communicator. In Mary's case, she has enriched these skills with a  
talent to describe and explain complexity through clear and straightforward  
language. She does a wonderful job of synthesizing discussions and boiling  
content down to its basic components. Furthermore, she assembles this  
content into concise messages for others to understand.

In the 20-year history of DDI, we have seen many changes in research data  
management, which is now characterized as a global research data ecosystem.  
Today, the DDI Alliance finds itself a player in this much larger  
environment with mounting pressure from diverse stakeholders. Mary has  
helped navigate the Alliance through this sea change and has been an  
outstanding diplomat on behalf of our community in this new ecosystem.  
Toward this end, she has been an active contributor in the Research Data  
Alliance, bridging our standards organization with research data activities  
around the globe.

While there is sadness in seeing Mary retire from the directorship, we are  
very grateful for the years she served as the Alliance's Director. With  
heartfelt thanks, we wish Mary the very best in the future.


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