20220412 Scientific Board Meeting Minutes
- Hilde Orten (Unlicensed)
Attendees
Darren, Flavio, Hilde, Ingo, Jared, Simon, Wendy, Wolfgang
Apologies
Carsten
1. Welcome to Wolfgang as our new member!
Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen, GESIS, is our new elected member, replacing Achim. Wolfgang was warmly welcomed by Ingo and the board members. Wolfgang introduced himself shortly, and expressed that Achim’s shoes are big to fill.
2. Report from meeting between the EB and SB chairs and vice-chairs
Ingo and Hilde reported from a coordination meeting between the chairs and vice-chairs of the Executive Board and the Scientific Board, organised by Jared on April 6th:
At that meeting the Annual meetings were discussed. This year will be organized on two different days:
DDI Alliance Annual Meeting of Members (virtual only)
DDI Alliance Annual Meeting of the Scientific Community (hybrid: in-person at IASSIST meeting & virtual)
Bill suggested that in the future both meetings could be held on the same day, that was the practice earlier. The agenda for the annual meeting of the Scientific Board will be discussed at the next Scientific Board meeting.
The Bill and Barry informed about plans for calls with the members/users. They are aiming start with a short call with a selection of members, to touch base regarding possible needs, and to do some promotion of DDI. Ingo asked if it would be possible to talk about the Technical Contact and Scientific Representatives roles in addition.
It was agreed that the procedures for budget requests from last year will be repeated for the FY2022/23.
3. Working group contacts reports
Simon reported from the CDI group that release work is ongoing and that a draft is scheduled to be sent to the TC in the beginning of June.
Hilde asked about the activities of the Paradata group. Ingo who is a member of the group will check out this.
Wolfgang was assigned as a contact for the SDTL group, taking over from Achim.
4. Budget requests from the Scientific Board
a. The planned physical meeting, Chur September 5th – 6th
It was agreed to re-apply for budget money to organize a physical meeting of the Scientific Board. Budget money for the physical meeting were allocated for the FY2021/2022, but was not spent as it was not possible to organize the meeting due to Covid 19.
b. Hackathon
Ingo suggested to send in a budget request for organizing a hackathon, with the purpose of reinitiating the DDI developers group. This was approved at the meeting.
On a general basis it was agreed that the Scientific Board only should suggest budget proposals related to activities on a meta level, or with the purpose to initiate activities.
5. Advisory members role – Proposal for description up for voting
A description of the Advisory members role provided by Ingo was up for voting and agreed content wise. Some questions regarding the sequence of the points were raised. Wendy agreed to help with the editing (the original proposal included in the Appendix).
The next step will be to plan nominations of Advisory members.
6. Technical Contact and Scientific Representatives roles – Definitions for the roles up for voting
Definitions for ‘Technical Contact’ and ‘Scientific Representatives’ roles were up for voting and agreed. Please see the definitions in the Appendix. Wolfgang raised the question I one or several Technical Contacts would be possible. Hilde mentioned that for member organisations where such a role is possible one person should have the official role specified in the bylaws. This would, however, not prevent other technical people from subscribing to email lists addressing technical issues, as Wendy expressed as a wish from the TC.
7. URN resolution working group update (Carsten)
This point was postponed till next time as Carsten was not at the meeting.
8. AOB
Simon pointed at a letter sent from the Dagstuhl organisers group to the Scientific Board and the Executive Board, informing about the activities of the group and forthcoming Dagstuhl workshops. The letter has been well received by the board. Ingo suggested that some organizational affiliation of the Dagstuhl organisers group might be something to think about for future. Simon will bring this idea forward to the group .
Appendix
Proposal for description of the Advisory member role of the Scientific Board’ (Ingo Barkow)
advisory members should not be active or former personnel from DDI Alliance member organizations
ideally, they should be from e.g. academia, other metadata or data standardization bodies or international organizations where a collaboration could be strategically useful from the perspective of the Alliance
advisory members can be proposed internally from the members of the scientific board or externally from the community (e.g. scientific representatives after scientific community meetings)
the number of advisory members is limited to two (as specified by the bylaws)
the role of advisory member is a volunteer role, there is no financial compensation involved (exceptions might occur on a case by case basis - see travel costs for the Chur meeting)
the advisory members are elected by the Scientific Board and have a term of two years
advisory members can be re-elected after their term
advisory members can step down at any time from the Scientific Board
advisory members are non-voting members of the Scientific Board (as specified in the by-laws)
Definitions for Scientific Representative and Technical Contact
The work of the Scientific Board Revision temporary working group resulted in a number of changes to the DDI Alliance bylaws to accommodate for the current Scientific Board structure. In connection with this work it was also decided to include two additional contact roles for member- and associated member organizations, in addition to the Designated Member Representative role: A Scientific Representative role and a Technical Contact.
In order to formalize the new roles a little more, as well as to recruit people for the roles, we need some definitions for each of them. Please find suggestions for definitions specified by the Scientific Board revision temporary working group at the end of this document.
The definitions will be up for vote at our Scientific Board meeting on April 12th.
The text below includes extracts from the bylaws about the new roles Scientific Representative and Technical Contact.
Paragraphs about the Scientific Representative and the Technical Contact in the DDI Alliance bylaws
II
Scientific Representative: An individual representing the Member Organization to act as contact regarding scientific matters.
Technical Contact: An individual representing the Member Organization regarding technical matters.
VI B, 1 (i)
The Member Organization should provide a Member Representative, Scientific Representative, and Technical Contact to support communication between the Member Organization and the Alliance. A single individual could fulfill multiple roles. These individuals should attend the appropriate meetings of the Alliance.
VI B, 1 (f) The Associate Member Organization should provide a Member Representative, Scientific Representative, and Technical Contact to support communication between the Member Organization and the Alliance. A single individual could fulfill multiple roles. These individuals should attend the appropriate meetings of the Alliance.
Draft definitions, for approval by vote of the Scientific Board:
The draft definitions below were developed by the Scientific Board Revision temporary working group.
The definitions are up for voting on the meeting of the Scientific Board meeting on Tuesday April 12th 2022.
Scientific Representative
Scientific Representative within the Member Agency should be designated to provide support and/or input to the Scientific activities of the Alliance. Scientific Contacts should have knowledge in one or more of the following areas:
expert understanding of metadata and what it can do
working knowledge of statistical life-cycle and survey methodology
knowledge of future directions in statistical analysis
working knowledge of experimental design
working knowledge of some other (outside social science) data domains
understanding of new data representation techniques
knowledge of data infrastructures
Technical Contacts
Technical Contacts within the Member Agency should be designated to provide support and/or input to the technical activities of the Alliance in the following areas.
Implementation of DDI and other metadata management on a technical level
Modeling in various representations (UML, XML, RDF, JSON, etc.)
Technological changes in data and metadata storage and access
Preparation of technical documentation for implementers of DDI
Technical testing of DDI products and development work