20211214 Scientific Board Meeting Minutes

Attendees:

Achim, Arofan, Carsten, Dan G., Darren, Flavio, Hilde, Ingo, Jared, Simon, Wendy

Agenda:

1. Presentation of new WG – Glossary

Dan and Arofan reported from the work of the group. The group has already nine members. The WG will not create own definitions, but will describe existing ones. A question was discussed regarding what to do with discrepancies in definitions across DDI specifications. The group was asked to report such instances back to the groups that maintain the specifications if similar are detected.

A Scientific Board contact will be assigned to the group at the next meeting of the Scientific Board.

2. Report from URN resolution group work – Carsten

Carsten reported from the work of the URN resolution temporary working group of the Scientific Board. A background document for discussion is currently in preparation by the group. Work will be ongoing on the new year, and the next meeting of the group is scheduled to January 18^th.

3. Status update SB Contacts for the WGs

Ingo plans to meeting with the TC in the week of December 13^th.

Darren will meet with representatives of the CV group in the week of December 20^th.

Achim has been in contact with the SDTL group and report that their progress looks good. He will meet with the group in January.

Simon has been in contact with the CDI group regarding a possible meeting with the group, and will receive a written document from Arofan describing the achieved goals and future plans.

Flavio has been in contact with the new chairs of the Training group and awaits response regarding the collaboration.

Hilde (Paradata group) and Carsten (XKOS) no actions taken.

4. Plan meeting of the Scientific Community

A meeting of the Scientific Community will take place on January 27^th. Two important questions related to this are:

Two reporting meetings a year could be too much?
How to trigger interesting discussions?

Ingo and Hilde had with help from Achim prepared some possible agenda points for the SC meeting in January (below). These were discussed at the meeting, and in general, all members liked the proposed topics:

URN resolution

Ignition speech – Arofan, Carsten?

Communicate issues and requirements

Mapping approach between specifications

Ignition talk – Flavio?

Mapping between DDI specifications

Ignition talk – ask representative from EOSC Semantic Interoperability Task Force , Metadata standards group?

Presentation of the mapping work of the EOSC Interoperability Framework, the EOSC Semantic Interoperability Task Force, in relation to DDI

Mapping formats discussion. SKOS format, other?

Cross-specification implementation guidelines (could be part of the above?)

Ignition talk – Arofan, Flavio?

Definition about what an implementation guide should contain.

Which areas need an implementation guide?

Example: Variable cascade in GSIM, DDI-Lifecycle and DDI-CDI

Scientific Plan focus

Is something missing in the plan overall?

Is something missing on the level of the WGs?

Ideas for Advisory members for the SB – suggestion for candidates
Cycles of meetings of the Scientific Community

Once or twice a year?

Types of meeting(s) (reporting/discussion)?

In connection to a conference (virtual/in person)?

Closeness in time to members meeting?

Closeness in time to finalization of the Scientific Plan?

In addition to the above, additional topics were suggested at the meeting:

Darren proposed to focus on best practices for versioning, regarding DDI CVs and a linked data platform.
Simon suggested a short intro to the work of the SB and the work of the WGs for newcomers.
Jared pointed at the importance of explaining the purpose of the Scientific Community meetings, especially since this will be the first meeting of this format. In the past, the Alliance held Scientific Board meetings once per year. This meeting seems like it will serve a different purpose, with the potential to hold more than one meeting per year. We'll want to communicate the purpose of this Scientific Community meeting to everyone, including longtime DDI community members and new participants. Communication can be in both the agenda distributed before the meeting and the introductory comments at the beginning of the meeting.
Jared also stressed the importance of getting community input about Scientific Community meeting agenda topics for future meetings, and asked if the community suggest agenda items for this upcoming Scientific Community meeting? Can we ensure there is sufficient time for community discussion about relevant topics?

As everybody feel this would be too much for a meeting scheduled to two hours, somebody (likely Ingo and Hilde) will go through all of the topics in order to figure out how much time each of them would be likely to require.

This will form background for decisions regarding which and how many topics to choose.

5. Feedback from EDDI?

SB members who took part in activities related to the EDDI conference as well as the EDDI Training Fair advance gave all positive feedback on the different events.