#1171: [wg/dx] Dataset Exchange Working Group Charter

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Opened Nov 21, 2025

This issue was created because the 'horizontal review requested' label was added to § https://github.com/w3c/strategy/issues/521

This review is requested prior to the Advisory Committee Review.

New charter proposal, reviewers please take note.

Charter Review

https://w3c.github.io/dx-wg-charter/

diff from charter template

Expected end of charter refinement phase: February 2026

diff from charter template

chair dashboard

What kind of charter is this?

  • Existing WG recharter

Horizontal Reviews: apply the Github label "Horizontal review requested" to request reviews for accessibility (a11y), internationalization (i18n), privacy, security, and TAG. Also add a "card" for this issue to the Strategy Funnel.

Communities suggested for outreach

See https://w3c.github.io/dx-wg-charter/#coordination

Known or potential areas of concern

Where would charter proponents like to see issues raised?

Anything else we should think about as we review?

The plan is to make the Dataset Exchange WG a joint working group with the DDI Alliance. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is also in preparation.

Charter facilitator(s)

cc @pchampin

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Discussions

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Discussed Nov 24, 2025 (See Github)

skipping

Discussed Dec 1, 2025 (See Github)

(Sarven isn't here today)

Discussed Dec 8, 2025 (See Github)

Skipped

Discussed Dec 15, 2025 (See Github)

Sarven: Working on this one. Can we priortiize the RDF reviews so we can close?

Discussed Jan 5, 2026 (See Github)

(Skipped.)

Discussed Jan 12, 2026 (See Github)

Sarven: Reviewed https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews-private-brainstorming/issues/226#issuecomment-3734793121

Sarven: This charter ended, and they're renewing it with new deliverables. Group has been around for a while; other work items have been through related WGs. e.g. Government LInked Data. 3 items: want to continue maintaining Data Cube and Dataset Catalog vocabularies. New item is Variable Descriptions vocabulary. Some work is coming from the DDI alliance. Some work is coming from social sciences. Collections of surveys and research data. They want to standardize DDI alliance work via the W3C. Connects in some ways to the existing work. That's all great. Highlighted a couple things to reflect on: FAIR Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). They mention that as a possible input. I'm a bit allergic to it: in the context of W3C specifications, FAIR is unnecessary and not particularly useful. It's too high-level. Don't bother mentioning it, although it's of interest in these circles. They gave the example of one spec that follows FAIR: RO-Crates. Continue mentioning that spec, and possibly concrete inputs.

Jeffrey: Justification for removing the FAIR principles shouldn't claim that the WG

Sarven: I'll adjust the wording.

Lola: Can you explain why FAIR isn't relevant for W3C things?

Sarven: We have the Web Architecture, which talks about global identifiers. We have accessibility principles. Everything we do is interop. They have principles for how research should be shared, but when you look closer, the manifestation of these principles isn't always interoperable within their ecosystem. Some of the realization follows Linked Data principles, and some is off the web. The context here is for things that are on the web, and for that subset, we have the specifications and principles already.

Sarven: They have a long list of liaisons, and it's not clear which are important for normative dependencies, and which are just coordination. They could clarify that.

Sarven: I was involved in some of this. The DDI-RDF discovery is important, and they should consider whether it's important to include. We can suggest it, and let Pierre-Antoine work it out.

Lola: Sounds like there's a revision to make, and then people should comment on the issue.

Sarven: I'll update.

Comment by @csarven Jan 12, 2026 (See Github)

https://github.com/w3c/strategy/issues/521#issuecomment-3740741970