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It is common practice for data providers to include text descriptions for each column when publishing data sets in the form of data dictionaries. While these documents are useful in helping an end-user properly interpret the meaning of a column in a data set, existing data dictionaries typically are not machine-readable and do not follow a common specification standard. We introduce the Semantic Data Dictionary, a specification that formalizes the assignment of a semantic representation of data, enabling standardization and harmonization across diverse data sets. In this paper, we present our Semantic Data Dictionary work in the context of our work with biomedical data; however, the approach can and has been used in a wide range of domains. The rendition of data in this form helps promote …