DDI Moving Forward: Facilitating Interoperability and Collaboration with Other Metadata Standards

Background

The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) metadata standard describes data that result from observational methods in the social, behavioral, economic, and health sciences. DDI development has progressed from a codebook-oriented specification to a version that supports the full lifecycle of research data. Beginning in 2012, work began at Dagstuhl on a model-driven version of the DDI standard, advanced through a series of "sprints".

Goals

As the expansion of the model-driven DDI standard continues, the need to work collaboratively and to ensure interoperability between DDI and other metadata standards becomes more apparent. To realize these goals, this workshop will bring together representatives from the following metadata standards: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and RDF community, Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX), Research Data Alliance (RDA), Generic Statistical Information Model (GSIM), health standards, DDI, and other related standards. The meeting will focus on the review of the current DDI work, discuss how best to work collaboratively, how to be aware of each standard’s developments, and to investigate opportunities for developing joint projects. This is a continuation of a similar workshop in 2015.

Results

It is expected that a spokesperson for each group represented at this workshop will provide information about their standard’s development procedures and goals. This will provide a basis for discussions on collaboration and future opportunities. These discussions should benefit all the represented standards and result in:

• A shared understanding of the metadata standards for research data in terms of their commonalties and successful practices
• Clarification of points of interaction between standards both in their current forms and in their future development
• Improved communication across disciplines
• Identification of any possible options for the collaborative work