Standardised Data on Initiatives - STARDIT: Alpha Version

Ensuring people affected by initiatives (including research, education and international development) are involved in shaping how they are done is essential to ensure that what is being done (including what is being researched) is aligned with the priorities of those affected. This includes ensuring that access to knowledge generated from the initiative is universal (open access), according to the UN Convention of Human Rights. Meanwhile, ‘citizen science’ and participatory action research are blurring the lines between concepts such as ‘researcher’, ‘public’, ‘patient’ and ‘citizen’. For example, those researching global air pollution are not limited to distinct disciplines such as ‘public health’, ‘environment’ or ‘education’, with everyone affected, including researchers. The importance of involving people in initiatives by sharing power is clear, but evidence-informed methods of doing this are lacking. Creating an evidence base to inform the most effective ways of sharing power when designing, doing and evaluating initiatives is essential in order to ensure efficient, effective and equitable ways of working for the benefit of all. Standardised Data on Initiatives (STARDIT) is designed to create a standard way to share information about who was involved in an initiative (who did which tasks), what was done, what was learned and any impacts which occurred. It is designed to be flexible, so it can be easily adapted to be useful across all disciplines, including health, environment, basic science, policy and international development. STARDIT reports will be shared open access (in the public domain), using machine readable linked-data. STARDIT is being co-created in a collaborative way, with anyone in the world invited to be a part of shaping the development. All information about it will be shared for free under a Creative Commons licence. The project is currently being hosted by the WikiJournals on Wikimedia Foundation servers. The co-creation process is being supported pro-bono by the charity ‘Science for All’.