As part of the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) initiative, NIH has issued a Request for Information titled "Making Data Usable - A Framework for Community-based Data and Metadata Standards Efforts for NIH-relevant Research" (NOT-ES-15-002.html). The complete text of the RFI is available at http://goo.gl/uZTgZc.

Responses, due by December 5, 2014, must be submitted via e-mail to BD2K_CBS_RFI@niehs.nih.gov.

The RFI is intended to solicit comments and ideas related to how community-standards activities are initiated, developed, disseminated, and sustained and how the NIH might play a role in catalyzing such efforts. The NIH is interested in exploring how the BD2K initiative can contribute to the improvement of policies, governance, administrative procedures, and funding to support community-based standards efforts to develop and/or extend data and/or metadata standards, and how these activities relate to other ongoing or nascent biomedical research activities.