Standardised Data on Initiatives – STARDIT: Beta Version

Abstract

BackgroundThere is currently no standardised way to share information across disciplines about initiatives, including fields such as health, environment, basic science, manufacturing, media and international development. All problems, including complex global problems such as air pollution and pandemics require reliable data sharing between disciplines in order to respond effectively. Current reporting methods also lack information about the ways in which different people are involved in initiatives, making it difficult to collate and appraise data about the most effective ways to involve different people. ObjectiveSTARDIT (Standardised Data on Initiatives) was created to help everyone in the world find and understand information about collective human actions, which are referred to as ‘initiatives’. STARDIT enables multiple categories of data to be reported in a standardised way across disciplines, facilitating appraisal of initiatives and aiding synthesis of evidence for the most effective ways for people to be involved in initiatives. MethodSTARDIT is the first open access web-based data-sharing system which standardises the way that information about initiatives is reported across diverse fields and disciplines, including information about which tasks were done by which stakeholders. STARDIT data is licensed as public domain (CC0) and integrated into Wikidata; it works across multiple languages and is both human and machine readable. Reports can be updated throughout the lifetime of an initiative, from planning to evaluation, allowing anyone to be involved in reporting impacts and outcomes. STARDIT development is guided by participatory action research paradigms, and has been co-created with people from multiple disciplines around the world in multiple ways, working with Indigenous people, cancer patients, health researchers, environmental researchers, economists, librarians and academic publishers. ResultsOver 100 people from multiple disciplines have been involved in co-designing STARDIT. STARDIT reports have been created for peer-reviewed research in multiple journals and other research projects. A working Beta version was publicly released in February 2021 (ScienceforAll.World/STARDIT).