Two views of the data documentation initiative: Stakeholders, collaboration and metadata standards creation

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper uses boundary work theory (Gieryn, 1983, among others) to analyze the differences in organizational participation in the creation and maintenance of the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) standard. The Data Documentation Initiative is a global consensus standard created to describe social science research data. Specifically, the paper addresses how two key social science data archives (SSDA) – the Interuniversity Consortium of Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and the United Kingdom Data Archive (UKDA) – mobilized their differences as resources to create DDI. This paper describes the collaborative activities of the two organizations. It also analyzes how those differences in collaboration resulted in boundary or “juncture” activities and the role those activities played in organizational maintenance. Our study compares how one organization, ICPSR, engaged in translating and aligning activities related to the development of the standard, while the other data archive, UKDA, engaged in decentering activities. The paper uses this case of standards work to reflect on the role of boundaries as resources for organizational resilience over the long‐term.