News

The DDI Alliance (http://www.ddialliance.org/) is pleased to announce the public release of XKOS version 1.2, a free and open specification that facilitates sharing and management of statistical classifications.

XKOS is a simple and elegant model to represent complex classifications via their structural and textual properties, as well as the relations between classifications. By leveraging the widely-used Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), XKOS extensions allow linkages to a wealth of existing thesauri and taxonomies to better support statistical classifications and concept management systems. XKOS also refines SKOS semantic properties to allow the use of more specific relations between statistical concepts, classifications, or any other case where SKOS is employed.

XKOS is currently used at a number of national statistical agencies and has been available as a draft since 2013. Since undergoing a final review in 2017, all issues have been addressed and corrected in preparation for the publication of version 1.2.

Links to the specification and instructions for comment are found at:

http://www.ddialliance.org/Specification/RDF/XKOS

CALL FOR PAPERS

11th Annual European DDI User Conference (EDDI19), DDI - The Basis of Managing the Data Life Cycle

• Submission Deadline: September 1, 2019, 23:59 CEST
• Place: Tampere, Finland
• Date: December 3/4, 2019
• Hosts:   Finnish Social Science Data Archive, Tampere University, Statistics Finland
• Conference web page: http://www.eddi-conferences.eu/eddi19

EDDI19 is organized jointly by the Finnish Social Science Data Archive, Tampere University, Statistics Finland, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and IDSC of IZA - International Data Service Center of the Institute for the Study of Labor.

The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) is an international standard for describing the data produced by surveys and other observational methods in the social, behavioural, economic, and health sciences.

The meeting 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 and present.

Call for Papers

We are seeking presentations, talks, papers, posters on all things DDI:

• Case Studies
• Mature implementations
• Early Implementations
• Interplay of DDI with other standards or technologies
• Projects in early phases in which DDI is under consideration
• Critiques of DDI

The topics of the conference include, but are not limited to:

• User Needs, Efficient Infrastructures and Improved Quality
• Official Statistics
• Reusing and Sharing Metadata
• Data Harmonization
• Incentives to Document Data
• Open Data and Linked Open Data
• Privacy and Access Control
• Metadata versus Data and Related Ethics
• Software / Tools

Submission

Proposals are welcome for multiple content types and presentation forms.

Content Types

• Scientific Method
• Impact for the Community
• Project Report

Presentation Forms

• Complete Session
• Full Paper
• Regular Presentation
• Short Presentation
• Poster/Software Demonstration

Other Submission Types

• Tutorial or Workshop
• Side Meeting

If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please have a look at the overview on submissions and use the online submission system of the conference (opens on 23.05.).

• The deadline for submissions is September 1, 2019, 23:59 CEST.
• Please have a look at the Call for Paper page for further details.
• Please consider to indicate your availability as reviewer as well.

General Information

• For more information, see the conference web site at http://www.eddi-conferences.eu/eddi19.
• The Program Committee strategically develops, creates and organizes the program.
• The Organization Committee coordinates the onsite work.
• For questions or any other correspondence regarding the Call for Papers of EDDI18, please send an email to eddi19-prog@googlegroups.com.
• Last year's program is available at the EDDI18 website.

For more information about the EDDI conference series and details on the previous EDDI conferences, look at http://www.eddi-conferences.eu/.

We look forward to welcoming you to EDDI2019 in Tampere!

Mari Kleemola and Jon Johnson (co-chairs) 
on behalf of the EDDI19 Program Committee

The 7th Annual North American DDI User Conference (NADDI19) was held in Ottawa, Canada April 24-26, 2019.  NADDI19 was hosted by Statistics Canada and included 19 presentations, 8 posters, 2 workshops, and discussion sessions.  The program is available on the conference website.  Nearly all presentations are available at https://zenodo.org/communities/naddi/.

Anil Arora, Chief Statistician of Canada, spoke during the opening keynote speech, "Enabling the modernization of official statistics with metadata standards." Mr. Arora noted, "A national statistical office must deliver timely insights that are grounded in quality, backed by good methodology. And in order to do that, we are intricately dependent on international standards, like the DDI." He later added, "Standards like DDI are going to be crucial if we are to keep pace with the knowledge cycle that constantly surfaces more and more data. This standard will enable timeliness but will also ensure high quality insights." The closing plenary was presented by Jeff Moon, Director, Canadian Association of Research Libraries, Portage Network.  

The Annual Meeting of Member Representatives will be held on Saturday, 1 June 2019, in Sydney, AU (directly after IASSIST). Remote participation will be available for those who can't attend in person.