ICSU-WDS had a good presence at the recent First Plenary of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) in Gothenburg, Sweden (18-20 March 2013); with Françoise Genova and Wim Hugo of the WDS Scientific Committee, and Mustapha Mokrane (WDS-IPO Executive Director) attending. Reinforcing the common links between ICSU-WDS and RDA, this launch event resulted in the initiation of two RDA/WDS Interest Groups: one on Publishing Data—building on the existing framework of the newly established ICSU-WDS Data Publication Working Group, and another on Data Repository Certification—in light of the experience gained by ICSU-WDS in this area. An exchange of ideas also took place between the ICSU-WDS Working Group on Knowledge Networks and the proposed  Contextual Metadata working group in RDA, including a possible cross-membership for the two groups.

In March 2013, Mustapha Mokrane (Executive Director) and Rorie Edmunds (Programme Officer) of the ICSU-WDS International Programme Office attended the 22nd Session of the International Oceanographic Data Exchange (IODE-XXII) in Ensenada, Mexico. Following close collaboration between the Membership and Accreditation Subcommittee of the WDS Scientific Committee and the IODE Project Office, it was formally agreed at this Session that IODE will adopt a Quality Management Framework  aligned with the catalogue of criteria for WDS certification for its National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODCs). IODE has thus taken responsibility over the certification of its NODCs.

At its 7th Meeting (held 1–2 November 2012, in Taipei), the WDS Scientific Committee took the historic decision to establish WDS Working Groups (WGs) in order to realize three leading-edge services considered to add value to the wider scientific community:

• A WDS Open Metadata Catalogue
  
• A searchable WDS Scalable Knowledge Network
  
• A community-based Data Publication and Curation Service

After polling WDS Members for their feedback on these services, we are pleased to announce that the initial charters and memberships of two WGs—in the first stage, the Open Metadata Catalogue and Knowledge Network WGs are combined—are now available (please click on the relevant link above).

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We are extremely happy to report that Dr. Evgeny Kharin—Director of WDS Regular Member: WDC - Solar Terrestrial Physics, Moscow—was recently awarded the IAGA Long Service Medal by the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy in recognition of his long-term data stewardship efforts. We extend our congratulations to Dr. Kharin, and hope that his valuable contribution to both the geomagnetism community and the World Data System continues for many years to come.