Research data management has become an important global issue as funding agencies, publishers, and disciplines increasingly require the sharing of publicly funded data. The Open Data movement treats curated data as a valuable resource available to support new research with the potential for new discoveries. Furthermore, the expectation that research findings can be replicated is pressuring researchers to make their data understandable and useable by others. Both the replication and reuse of research data is highly dependent on properly documented data. The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) provides two structured metadata specifications for describing the content and context of data about individuals or organizations (microdata) in the health, social, and behavioral sciences. This community-maintained standard for microdata is internationally recognized as a best practice in preparing, sharing, and preserving data.
Interested in learning more? Please join us in Madison for the third North American DDI (NADDI) Users Conference, to be held April 8-10, 2015. Organized by the Institute on Aging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the meeting will take place at the Pyle Center on the UW campus in beautiful downtown Madison, with the theme "Enhancing Discoverability with Open Metadata Standards."
The Keynote Speaker for the conference is Dr. Tito Castillo. Dr. Castillo is an independent consultant who has worked in the field of biomedical computing for over 25 years. More recently, he established the epiLab secure computing environment at University College London Institute of Child Health and began to apply DDI to a variety of epidemiological studies. In August 2014 he founded Xperimint Ltd, a specialist data management company for biomedical data management.
The conference will feature training sessions on Wednesday, April 8, with opening reception the evening of April 9. Wednesday’s training will cover an introduction to DDI in the morning and the afternoon will focus on the practical packaging of statistical datasets and metadata. Conference sessions focus on a wide range of innovative topics and projects.
We hope to see you there!