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Metadata Open Forum on ISO/IEC 11179
Request for Abstracts: Input on next generation ISO/IEC 11179 Edition 4
Key Dates
Event Date: Monday, Nov 16, 2015
Location: National Institutes of Health, Natcher Conference Center, Bethesda,
Maryland
Abstract Maximum Length: 250 words
Response Date: Sept 1, 2015
Notification Date: Sept 28, 2015
Issued by
US INCITS DM32.8 Technical Advisory Group (TAG) and Convenor for ISO SC32
WG2 Metadata Standards
Purpose
In many fields, the obvious solution to ‘The Data Deluge’ is the development of data
catalogs and dictionaries to locate, index and explain valuable data so that it may be
put to appropriate use. But what forms do these dictionaries take? What metadata
do they record? How is the metadata created and maintained? How are
associations between related data types discovered, recorded and used? How can
they be used to harmonize and standardize the kinds of data collected to achieve
better interoperability in a domain? How and to what extent can they be used to
facilitate and even automate data discovery, integration and analysis?
WG2 is seeking broad input and feedback from sources of expertise and interest in
its ISO/IEC 11179: Information Technology - Metadata Registries (MDR) standard.
The cornerstone of this standard is Part 3: Basic Model and Attributes: a conceptual
model supporting all aspects of the management of metadata about data, so as to
support that data’s creation, interpretation, analysis and reuse.
See Annex for an excerpt/description of ISO/IEC 11179-3:2013. The standard is freely
available at: http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/
WG2 committee members want to make the standard more useful and accessible to
users across the whole system design, data management and analysis lifecycle, so as
to better support larger datasets and distributed/community metadata creation
models. We would like to link the standard with emerging national and
international metadata initiatives such as the Research Data Alliance (RDA), the
Data Documentation Initiative (DDI); with government open data initiatives such as
the US and UK data.gov, and more widely with emerging paradigms such as Cloud
Computing and Big Data. We would also like to guide the development of the
technical report series ISO/IEC 19583 (Metadata Concepts and Usages) which we
intend to address different implementations and use cases for the standards’ use.
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The primary goals are to:

Simplify and streamline adoption of the ISO/IEC11179 models into systems
that create, curate, maintain, and discover metadata;

Simplify adoption and integration of ISO/IEC11179 content – data elements
and their associated semantics – into software engineering and data
management workflows;

Automate the identification of overlapping content for subsequent
harmonization according to the technical reports ISO/IEC 20943 Procedures
for achieving metadata registry consistency, and ISO/IEC 19583 Part 2:
Metadata Usage;

Ensure interoperability between MDRs; and

Support knowledge extraction from data annotated by registered ISO/IEC
11179 metadata elements.
Information Requested
All stakeholders with an interest in improving discovery and reuse of data and
metadata are invited to submit an abstract for a 30 minute presentation at the
Metadata Open Forum, November 16, 2015. We are particularly interested in
talks that:
 Report on an implementation of ISO/IEC11179 and the infrastructure required
for it to support its community;
 Describe processes for content creation, administration and maintenance,
community engagement;
 Detail approaches to the prevention and management of duplicate and
overlapping content;
 Introduce new fields of application where there is a clear need for proactive
metadata management, or where there are rival data standards that require
harmonization or integration;
 Communicate lessons learned from existing metadata repository efforts,
regardless of success;
 Explore approaches for linking to data and data catalogues (such as XML/JSON
attributes) or embedding metadata in datasets; and
 Provide use cases for and examples of metadata-driven data discovery,
integration and analysis
We would also be grateful if you could briefly indicate any relevant affiliation to
industry, government, or academia and your area of expertise. Relevant expertise
could include: metadata management services or software; formal or community
metadata standards, e.g., ISO/IEC 11179, Federal Government Open Data Metadata
Schema, ISA-TAB, etc.; Semantics management, e.g., W3C semantic web
technologies; and data science (extracting knowledge from structured and
unstructured data).
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Abstracts should be submitted to the SC32 WG2 Convenor, Denise Warzel at
warzeld@mail.nih.gov by Sept 1, 2015. Please include the “Open Forum 2015
Abstract” in the subject line.
Submitting an Abstract
 Up to 250 words.
 File has to be in a PDF format.
 Format for 8.5 x 11 inch paper size with one inch margins left, right, top,
and bottom.
 Place the title in 14 point Times Roman typeface, single column, bold,
centered, and upper and lower case using initial capitals for each word
in the title other than articles and prepositions.
 Include below the title, the names, credentials, institutions and
locations of the author(s) using 12 point Times Roman typeface, single
column, bold, centered, and upper and lower case using appropriate
capitals.
 Include the main text of the submission single-spaced in 10 point Times
New Roman typeface, justified, one-column format.
 Disable track changes in Word before uploading.
Responders are free to address any or all of the categories listed above. The
submitted information will be reviewed by US INCITS DM32.8 and SC32 WG2
Convenor and you will be notified of acceptance for the forum via email no later
than Sept. 28, 2015.
Please do not include any proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive
information in your response. INCITS will use the information submitted in
response to this solicitation at its discretion.
SC32 WG2 may use the information gathered by this solicitation to inform the
development of future editions of 11179 or other related Metadata standards.
Inquiries
Please direct all inquiries to:
Denise Warzel
Convenor, SC32, WG2 Metadata Standards
Telephone: 301-480-6199
Email: warzeld@mail.nih.gov
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Annex
Excerpt from ISO/IEC 11179-3:2013 introduction:
“This part of ISO/IEC 11179 is of interest to information developers, information
managers, data administrators, standards developers, application developers,
business modellers and others who are responsible for making data
understandable and shareable. ISO/IEC 11179 has broad applicability across
subject area domains and information technologies.
This part of ISO/IEC 11179 applies to activities including:
a) the definition, specification and contents of metadata registries, including
interchanging or referencing among various collections of data elements;
b) the design and specification of application-oriented data models, databases
and message types for data interchange;
c) the actual use of data in communications and information processing systems;
d) interchange or reference among various collections of metadata;
e) the registration and management of semantic artifacts that are useful for data
management, data administration, and data analysis;
f) the interrelation and mapping of concept systems with other concept systems,
e.g., to support efforts to converge on consistency through harmonization and
vetting activities;
g) the interrelation of concept systems with data held in relational databases, XML
databases, knowledgebases, text, and possibly graph databases deriving
from natural language text understanding systems;
h) the provision of services for semantic computing: Semantics Service Oriented
Architecture, Semantic Grids, semantics based workflows, Semantic Web,
etc.;
i) support for addressing semantic web considerations such as AAA (anyone can
say anything about anything), non-unique names, and open world
assumption;
j) the capture of semantics with more formal techniques (in addition to natural
language) -- First Order Logic (e.g., Common Logic), Description Logics (such
as OWL-DL);
k) support of Application Development and Maintenance;
l) support of data migration, data mediation;
m) support of portals, data marts, and data warehouses;
n) support of data grids and online transaction networks;
o) ontological reasoning with metadata;
p) ontology entry point for browsing and searching metadata registries;
q) capture of associations between the published identifiers used in the
ontology(s), and the concepts registered in the registry;
r) support for Ontology-driven Data Translation;
s) support for data integration & data interoperation.”