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From left to right (1st row): Fred van Blommestein, Jeanine Evers, Christina Silver, Darren Ford, (2nd row): Joachim Pfaff, Daniel Turner, David Woods, Yves Marcoux, Friedrich Markgraf, (3rd row): Élias Rizkallah, Normand Peladeau

About the Rotterdam Exchange Format Initiative (REFI)

The Rotterdam Exchange Format Initiative (REFI) was formed to develop the REFI-QDA Standard for exchanging processed qualitative data between QDA software programmes.

 

REFI originated in September 2016 at the KWALON Conference: Reflecting on the Future of QDA Software (Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands), where the CEOs of eight QDA software companies stated their willingness to work together to create an interoperability standard. These software companies were: ATLAS.ti, Dedoose, f4analyse, MAXQDA, NVivo, QDAMiner, Quirkos and Transana.

 

Soon after, REFI was formed with a group of expert users / trainers of QDA software and standardisation experts acting as a project coordination group.

REFI membership

The core working group consists of representatives from several QDA software programmes – the developer group – and expert users / trainers of QDA software and standardisation – the coordination group.

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The Developer Group 

  • Friedrich Markgraf / Sebastian Petrausch (ATLAS.ti)

  • Joachim Pfaff (f4analyse)

  • Andre Liebenberg (NVivo)

  • Normand Peladeau (QDA Miner)

  • Daniel Turner (Quirkos)

  • David Woods (Transana)

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The Co-ordinating Group 

  • Kristi Jackson (Queri, USA)

  • Christina Silver (CAQDAS Networking Project, UK)

  • Fred Van Blommestein (University of Groningen, the Netherlands)

  • Graham R Gibbs (University of Huddersfield), UK

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Acknowledgements 

  • Jeanine Evers (KWALON, Erasmus University Rotterdam) (Chair of the Co-ordinating Group, 2016-2019)

  • Adam Long (NVivo) (2016 – 2017)

  • Darren Ford (NVivo) (2017 – 2018)

  • Élias Rizkallah (Université du Québec à Montréal) (Co-ordinating Group Member, 2016-2019)

  • Steve Wright, Gerben Moerman (User testers 2019)

  • Yves Marcoux (Université de Montréal) (Co-ordinating Group Member 2018-2019)

  • Eli Lieber (Dedoose) (involved in early stages of REFI)

  • Julia Gerson (MAXQDA) (involved in early stages of REFI)

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REFI Sponsors 

Several sponsors have facilitated the progress of REFI by funding face-to-face meetings meetings (in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Montreal, Canada), by partly funding the Coordination Group Chair (Jeanine Evers) and a standardisation expert (Fred Van Blommestein), and by partly funding the testing of the standard.

 

Other members of the Coordination Group have volunteered their time to the initiative. We are much indebted to:

  • Erasmus School of Law (Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada)

  • Erasmus Trust Fund Rotterdam (The Netherlands)

  • CLARIAH (The Netherlands)

  • Executive Board of Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands)

  • Erasmus Studio (Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Faculté des Sciences Humaines (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)

  • EBSI of Faculté des arts et des sciences (Université de Montréal)

  • KWALON (The Netherlands)

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