Ideas for a DDI Working Group on Metadata Publication and Access

[Wenzig, Knut]

Hello Dataverse community,

recently there was a discussion about publishing richer DDI metadata via OAI-PMH (https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/11493), and I noticed conversations around signposting happening in the Dataverse community (https://github.com/gdcc/exporter-croissant/pull/7). Dataverse instances are a major global source of DDI metadata, and at the same time, the DDI Alliance is considering developing recommendations on how DDI metadata should be published and accessed.

The Scientific Board of the DDI Alliance is currently exploring the idea of forming a working group on this topic. I’ve drafted a proposal, which you can view here:

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mipqK9TCDO5YHa6TulMmV90XTAVG_IilJLQ7xBFYJ2o/edit?usp=sharing

The goal is to develop practical recommendations for publishing DDI metadata in ways that would ideally allow the DDI Alliance to identify and possibly harvest records globally. Some initial approaches we’re considering include:

• OAI-PMH – see initial ideas for this approach here: Wenzig, K., & Han, X. (2024). State of DDI Cloud. IASSIST Quarterly, 48(4). https://doi.org/10.29173/iq1116
• FAIR Signposting – an early idea here: Wenzig, K., Daniel, A., Hansen, D., Koberg, T., & Tudose, M. (2025). Publishing Fine-Grained Standardized Metadata – Lessons Learned from Three Research Data Centers. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15464650

We’re also considering developing a DDI API and think about RDF approaches.

Given Dataverse’s central role in providing DDI metadata, I’d like to ask whether there might be interest in contributing to this working group in some form. Feel free to reach out here or contact me directly via email at kwe...@diw.de.

Best regards,

Knut Wenzig

(he/him/his ##CallMeByMyFirstName)

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German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin)

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