Minutes Scientific Board meeting, Chur September 05-06 2022
Participants:
Arofan Gregory (invited expert for day 1), Carsten Thiel, Darren Bell, Hilde Orten, Ingo Barkow, Jared Lyle (ex-officio member), Joachim Wackerow (former SB member and chair, invited expert), Simon Hodson, Wendy Thomas (ex-officio member), Wolfgang Zenk-Möltgen
Day 1 - September 05 2022
1. Outlook session - Joachim Wackerow and Arofan Gregory.
The purpose of this session was to provide input to a policy recommendation for the DDI Alliance, visions for DDI, how products fit together, their role in the world and how we communicate this.
In his presentation, Achim focused on bases for success criteria for a standard, and made an assessment of the DDI products against these criteria. He also focused on a set of selected topics: Specification framework - a generic approach, quality of a specification, metadata network and publication.
Arofan’s presentation was focusing on real world developments and the role of FAIR in the standards landscape, and related to this, what are the challenges and what should DDI do?
Work on a recommendations based on Achim and Arofan’s presentations and the following discussions will result in a ‘Scientific Board Recommendation’ document. The document was started at the meeting, and will be available along with the next version of the Scientific Work plan. Simon will be the editor of this document, while other Scientific Board members will fill in content.
2. Process documents and governance
2.1 Review process and governance
A revision of the current standards review process document is needed. Reviews of technical documents also need to be described. The TC had provided two related documents, one about standards review and one about review of technical documents. At the meeting it was agreed that some update is needed before a Scientific Board review of the documents takes place. Wendy has post meeting provided an updated draft for review by the Scientific Board.
2.1 Scientific Board internal proceedings
Scientific Board internal proceedings are reflected in the bylaws and the Scientific Work Plan. A document was started at the meeting to develop these further. Ingo will follow up on this.
3. Advisory members for the Scientific Board
The Scientific Board has agreed to use advisory members. The advisory members role is a voluntary role, primarily related to strategic discussions, e.g. to advice on how DDI standards interact with other standards, technical recommendations etc.. They should NOT be additionally ordinary members, but should be used specifically for strategic discussions.
A list of possible candidates for advisory member of the Scientific Board role was started at the meeting. According to the bylaws two advisory members would be possible. The work started at the meeting requires follow-up.
Day 2 - September 06 2022
4. URN Resolution
A Scientific Board temporary working group led by Carsten has been focusing on for DDI URN resolution high level goals, policies and technical solutions.
Documents related to the topic provided by Carsten in advanced of the meeting were discussed.
The central question expressed in two different wordings:
Should DDI URNs be resolvable PIDs in the sense of FAIR and e.g. EOSC PID policy? (That would require a common way of resolving them for both humans and machines.)
Should there be a common service that allows anyone to find out information about any DDI URN from a central authority, i.e. an Alliance system, independent of agency capacity or availability?
The TC has allready developed a registry system that points to a resolver, but not to a repository. In addition the system needs improved documentation and guidelines for use.
An alternative solution to this that satisfies FAIR PID system requirements should additionally be further outlined. Further explorations of technical solutions and costs might be needed.
Carsten has provided an updated version of the document post meeting. Discussions on how to move forward with the topic is needed.
5. Scientific Work Plan
How to move forward with the work on the next Scientific Work Plan was discussed. It was agreed to update the current Scientific Work Plan with minor revisions send this out to the members and the scientific community with a cover note saying that we will extend this for 2023, and we will seek approval of a new two year plan at the community meeting in June.
We will send the ‘Scientific Board Recommendation’ policy document out for feedback from the community along with the revised Scientific Work Plan.
6. Hackathon
Ingo will organise a hackathon for DDI developers within the timeframe of the FY 2022/23.
Possible topics could be additional representations for DDI-Lifecycle, e.g a Python representation. CDI related topics could be in focus in a follow-up workshop the next year.
Organising of the event, topics and announcements will be followed up by Ingo.
7. Voting among Scientific Board members for new Scientific Board chair and vice-chair (from January 01 2023)
Six voting members were present. Flavio Rizzolo confirmed his vote by e-mail.
Chair: Hilde Orten elected unanimously (seven votes)
Vice-Chair: Darren Bell elected unanimously (seven votes)
8. Other
ISO certification: Jared raised the question on whether the DDI Alliance would be interested to work towards ISO standardisation for DDI and mentioned that the ISO TC46/SC4 Committee Chair would be interested in helping DDI apply for certification if the Alliance would be interested in this. At the meeting it was decided to explore the option further. The Scientific Board will follow up on the exploration of this topic.