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20241202 Scientific Board Meeting, Chur - Minutes

20241202 Scientific Board Meeting, Chur - Minutes

Time: 10 AM - 4 PM 

Venue: University building:  B2.02.03 (Ringstrasse 34 (Building B))

Attendees: Ingo, Jared, Wendy, Hilde, Dan, Darren, Wolfgang

Apologies: Flavio, Simon

10AM to 12noon

  1. Scientific Work Plan: Review and define/assign specific actions

ENGAGEMENT

  1. 1 (Goal 1.1) Develop recommendations for better signposting and marketing of products for DDI Alliance technical outputs so it is easier and more transparent for users to identify the product they need for their use case. (By end of 2025 expansion)

1.1.1 The TC is currently working on the migration of website content to new systems. The product section of the website is in the reworks, and other pages of the website could also benefit from an upgrade in order for users to make it easier to find what they need.

1.1.2

1.1.3 A user review of the product pages when final was also proposed. Another idea was to use HubSpot analytics to track usage after user experience feedback has been implemented.

1.1.4 Recommendations from the SB regarding signposting and marketing will take place in 2025

1.1.5 Action: Hilde to follow up with TC on this.

1.2 (Goal 1.2) Develop stakeholder map and single sources of truth for audiences, stakeholders, contacts, and external representation. (Mid-2025)

1.2.1 What we need here are big lists. The question is where they should be hosted. HubSpot tables, or Google sheet in the short term? Another question is whether this should be provided for the SB businesses or for all of the Alliance.

1.2.2 Action: Darren to follow up on this.

1.3 (Goal 1.3) Deepen connection with W3C and explore the possibilities of a W3C recommendation for DDI components, such as the variable cascade. (2025)

1.3.1 Initial meeting between members of W3C’s Data Exchange WG and representatives from the DDI Alliance has taken place. 

1.3.2 There is agreement on the Scientific Board that collaboration would be a good thing. 

1.3.3 Questions like the below were raised: 

-Which version of the variable cascade to use? 

-Are we trying to get DDI incorporated into other W3C recommendations, or are we trying to get it published as a W3C recommendation?  

1.3.4 How to move forward discussed at the CDI side meeting in Chur. 

1.3.5 A next step in the collaboration is for DDI/UMICH and W3C to get an agreement in place. 

1.3.6 Action: Darren and Jared to follow up.

1.4 (Goal 1.4) Broaden scope and opportunities for DDI tools development by promoting the work of the DDI Developers WG and engaging third parties. (2025-2026)

1.4.1 The new CDI and forthcoming DDI-L v4.0, will have syntax representation libraries for various languages to save developer time and effort. This needs signposting (see 1.1.4). One idea would be to have a developers section at the topline of the website.

1.4.2 Also  the tools page on the website will need to be reviewed. TC will take care of this and make the page as simple as possible.

1.4.3 Ask the community if somebody is willing to oversee submissions of new tools to a database.

1.4.4 Action: Wolfgang to follow up with the TC regarding this.

1.4.5 The question of engaging third parties to adapt support for DDI was also addressed. The following ideas, among others, came up: 

1.4.5.1 Ask out to members to reach out to tools providers they are customers of? 

1.4.5.2 Find contact person to engage with third parties.

1.4.5.3 Create a community engagement group that could focus on this and other.

1.4.5.4 If it is not possible to establish such a group the SB will follow up regarding this goal in small steps.

EXPANSION

1.5 (Goal 2.1) Improve usage and awareness of the DDI Alliance registry and actively promote best practice for PID usage and resolution mechanisms, particularly URNs and use of URIs for CVs. (2025)

1.5.1 From January Darren will take over the lead of the CESSDA Interoperability WG. One of the focuses of the group will be on URNs and URIs usage.

1.5.2 One question is how we can pair URN and URIs within the DDI standards.

1.5.3 The DDI Alliance already has an agency registry. A question is whether we would want to extend this to become a repository for variable IDs.

1.5.4 Action: Darren/CESSDA to follow up on this and engage internally within the TC.

1.6 (Goal 2.2) Develop and enable community submission of more practical markup examples for all products in the DDI suite. (2024-2026) 

1.6.1 A task is to identify markups and make a list. 

1.6.2 One goal is to make simple examples simpler, e.g. to describe 2 rows and 2 columns of a dataset table. 

1.6.3 Provide examples with a markup and an explanation.

1.6.4 Categorise markups for newcomers and advanced.

1.6.5 Signposting on the web becomes important (see 1.1.4).

1.6.6 Ask members/community to produce content. 

1.6.7 Actions: 

1.6.7.1 All to follow up regarding the topic.

1.6.7.2 TC to follow up regarding the creation of new markup examples. 

1.7 (Goal 2.3) Proactively engage with and explore possibilities for DDI adoption in cross-domain initiatives and standards, including FAIR and CDIF. (2024 - 2026). 

1.7.1 DDI-CDI is in the center of the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF) developed under the WorldFair project and to be continued as an ongoing activity chaired by CODATA. The SB is interested in Simon’s input on this.  Cross-disciplinary markup examples would be useful. 

1.7.2 Agreed: Ask Simon if he is interested to hold the task, and if not give it to somebody else.

1.8 (Goal 2.4) Engage with SDMX community and UNECE community to identify future collaborations with the DDI Alliance. (2024-2025)

1.8.1 Report from the SB’s UNECE contacts Arofan and Flavio Nov 2024 link. Arofan and Flavio are agreed on use cases and practical examples. 

1.8.2 Actions:

1.8.2.1 TC/Wendy to follow up with Arofan and Flavio on the DDI/SDMX mappings activity. 

1.8.2.2 A report related to the ongoing activities by the end of the period will be fine (end 2025). 

1.9 (Goal 2.5) Increase visibility of the Alliance beyond traditional audience regions (i.e. North America, Europe and Australia) e.g. outreach to audiences in Africa and South America. (2025-2026)

1.9.1 Several initiatives where engagement would be possible are ongoing, or will start in the near future:

1.9.1.1 DDI promotion in South-Korea (Ingo). 

1.9.1.2 IASSIST in Africa (DDI Alliance is sponsor).

1.9.1.3 Worldbank Initiatives (Wolfgang).

1.9.1.4 CODATA’s involvement with the Inspire network

1.9.1.5 RDA/International Data week.

1.9.1.6 Questions: How can we get a metric of the DDI usage in Africa and other regions beyond the traditional audience regions?

1.9.1.7 What can the Alliance provide in terms of use cases and training materials? 

1.9.1.8 Increase visibility of existing materials through the website: 

1.9.1.8.1 No. of participants in WGs from different regions?

1.9.1.8.2 Registries of users:  Create a new list where people can register that they use DDI?1.9.1.8.3 Website map. 

1.9.1.9 Action: Wolfgang to follow up on this.

1.10 (Goal 2.6) Produce feasibility and scoping report for ISO certification for DDI product(s) and/or components. (Mid-2025) 

1.10.1 Dan Gillman is the ISO contact and the work of Dan and team to create a proposal is ongoing. 

1.10.2 Action: Hilde to invite Dan G. for a catch up with the SB in February 2025.

1.11 (Goal 2.7) Support the further development of implementation guides to help software architects and developers i.e. recommending the appropriate subset of a specification. Ideally, implementation guidelines should include code snippets or examples and have a consistent presentation across the product line. (2025-2026)

1.11.1 It was pointed out that several useful “deep-dive guides”/whitepapers existed 10 years ago. Since then there has been a shift to content. 

1.11.2 Product groups should be encouraged to write implementation guides.

1.11.3 TC to follow up regarding coverage and presentation style.

1.11.4 Wendy/TC to follow up.

1.12 (Goal 2.8) Proactively pursue appropriate funding opportunities in the various geographies in which the DDI Alliance has members. (2025-2026)

1.12.1 Members (anybody) can apply for DDI funding through the University of Michigan. 

1.12.2 Ideas that came up at the meeting was to explore which areas members need help with, and to provide documentation to use for funding requests.

1.12.3 A concrete example was to look at possibilities provided by the Oscar’s calls of the Horizon Europe 2025 program.

1.12. 4One idea could be to do something related to implementation guides, for example FAIR Implementation guidance for Social Sciences - Codebook and Lifecycle, and reach out to members to explore interest. 

1.12.5 Actions: Darren to explore possibilities for funding via EU’s Oscars funding programme OSCARS | Fostering the uptake of Open Science in Europe  

12 noon - 1PM Lunch

1PM - 2PM

ALIGNMENT

1.13 (Goal 3.1) Align and standardise technical documentation practices including field-level documentation. (2024-2026) 

1.13.1 This is a task of the TC, in collaboration with the SB and the working groups.

1.14 (Goal 3.2) Develop a formal Information Architecture and Content Management Strategy for the DDI Alliance, leading to better alignment of content across multiple products and re-development of DDI website (2024) 

1.14.1 This is a task of the TC/Jared (Secretariat) and the proposed new website UEX sub-group (see 1.1.2).

1.15 (Goal 3.3) Support development of a new integrated Training Platform and Media Library (2026) 

1.15.1 The proposed work on the website/UEX could include how to deal with this, as well as how to integrate videos and other training materials on the website. TC, the proposed new sub-group and the Training Group will be asked to collaborate on this to the extent feasible according to their plans. 

1.15.2 Action: Flavio (not present at the meeting) who is the SB contact for the Training Group and also on the TC, will be asked to contact the relevant groups regarding this. The work is supposed to be ongoing for the next two years.

1.16 (Goal 3.4) Liaise with Executive Board to develop a more formal Communications strategy and apparatus, including social media, newsletters, and other channels (2025)

1.16.1 SB to contact the EB regarding to formulate a formal communication strategy. One goal is to identify missing pieces in the communication internally in the Alliance, and externally.

1.16.2 Action: Hilde and Darren to follow up with the EB on the quarterly calls

1.17 (Goal 3.5) Improve collaboration and communication between the Scientific Board and Working Groups, including more formal periodic reporting. (2024) 

1.17.1 The goal here is to facilitate lightweight reporting and to align everyone. This is good for transparency. It would also be good to define a list of support activities that the SB can provide the working groups with, for example specific skills? Setting up review groups etc.

1.17.2 Actions:

1.17.2.1Darren and Wendy to create a reporting form before end of March. This can be a Google sheet/forms with controlled access, for example.

1.17.2.2 Hilde to set up a support activity list, to be reviewed by Darren and later by the full SB.

1.18 (Goal 3.6) Support Technical Committee in infrastructure consolidation and harmonisation: this includes cloud infrastructure, code repositories and CI/CD pipelines. (2024-2025)

1.19 (Goal 3.7) Support development of RDF serialisations for DDI products that do not currently have them. (2024-2026) 

1.20 (Goal 3.8) Support development and release of new products and versions of products in the DDI Product Suite. (2024-2025)

1.20.1 Goals 1.18 to 1.20 are added to indicate SB’s support of the related tasks.

2PM - 4PM

  1. Current and future SB memberships

A new period starts at the beginning of fiscal year 2025/2026

2.1 Flavio, Simon and Hilde have all served a four year period on the board. We would like to ask if they would be interested to stand as candidates for the upcoming election.

2.2 Action: Hilde to ask Flavio and Simon if they would be interested to stand as candidates for the new election. 

2.3 Anyone can propose candidates for the election. 

  1. Marketing - status and future approach

3.1 This point is covered above (see 1.1). The question is about how to make more people use DDI. To provide use cases/user journeys is a good starting point. 

  1.  Annual Meeting of Scientific Community

4.1 It was agreed to hold the Annual Meeting of the Scientific Community as a virtual meeting, and then try to organise physical community meetings in connection with events when possible, for example IASSIST and EDDI, focusing on what is new and how the community can engage, similar to that of the DatatCite meetings. 

4.2 Action: Hilde and Darren to agree timing for the virtual Annual Meeting of the Scientific Community, preferably to take place before IASSIST (June 3 - 6). Plan this together with the EB.

  1. Engagement with IASSIST 2025 

5.1 The idea of organising topical community meetings in connection with IASSIST and EDDI was discussed. It was agreed to propose a meeting for IASSIST. 

5.2 Action: Wolfgang, Hilde and Darren to prepare abstract for IASSIST DDI Scientific Community side meeting and poster.

  1. AOB

6.1 Next steps

6.1.1Hilde to send out minutes from the meeting for approval.

6.1.2 Jared to go through the minutes document to check which items involve contacting members and signposting.

6.1.3 Follow up on actions assigned under points 1 - 6.

 

 

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