Navigating the future of metadata

The DDI Alliance Scientific Board (https://ddialliance.org/leadership) would like to draw your attention to the developments for standardized metadata in the social sciences community and beyond. DDI products encompass the complete range of functions over the research data life cycle, allowing for both human- and machine-interactions with the documentation. They include DDI-Codebook for entry-level cataloguing; DDI-Lifecycle and Controlled Vocabularies for reusability and more sophisticated descriptions of surveys, questions and instruments; the XKOS extension to the Simple Knowledge Organization System for rich conceptual metadata; and the Structured Data Transformation Language (SDTL) for provenance. In addition, DDI-Cross Domain Integration (DDI-CDI) is a leading-edge product intended to fill the emerging need for integration of data from different disciplinary domains such as health or environmental sciences.

The DDI Alliance is an open, welcoming community that includes data archives, research institutions, statistical agencies, software companies, and others. Events like the annual meeting and virtual community meetings help to foster exchange and discussion among members and interested parties. The Scientific Work Plan defines major development goals, and Working Groups (WG) on specific topics are established for implementing detailed steps. Examples are the WGs on Training, Controlled Vocabularies, Cross Domain Integration, or the DDI Developers Community. Working Groups are open to everybody, not only from member organizations, so there are many options to get involved if you are interested.