The ICSU World Data System, ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA), and Research Data Alliance (RDA) are delighted to announce that International Data Week 2016 (IDW 2016) will be held from 11–17 September 2016 at the Sheraton Downtown Hotel in Denver, Colorado.
Under the theme From Big Data to Open Data – Mobilizing the Data Revolution, IDW will bring together data ...
Volunteered Geographic Information is becoming increasingly important in a number of scientific and development domains, and OpenStreetMap (OSM) is the largest effort to harness the power of the internet for crowd-sourced spatial data generation. OSM has more than 2.3 million registered users, and has mapped more than 34 million km of roads in all countries.
In this webinar Mikel Maron ...
We would like to congratulate Dr Yaxing Wei, who was selected by the WDS Scientific Committee (WDS-SC) from a strong list of candidates a s the winner of the WDS Data Stewardship Award for 2015 . Dr Wei will be presented with the 2015 Award and a prize at SciDataCon 2016.
Dr Wei is a geospatial information scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center ...
As the leading international, multidisciplinary organization in the provision of trusted data services, the International Council for Science – World Data System (ICSU-WDS) has adopted a new set of Data Sharing Principles to advance its goals and to embody the spirit of ‘open science’ meant to unite diverse communities of data producers and data users.
These Principles are in line with ...
The Research Data Alliance/United States (RDA/US) team focusses on development and impact for all US-based members of RDA, as well as looking ahead to develop a sustainable model for the RDA/US organization that can support the broader goals of RDA, both within the US and internationally.
To help achieve these goals, RDA/US is now recruiting a Director of Community Development to work closely with the broader RDA/US community to coordinate, expand, and develop funds for new and existing community efforts, and to provide support and services. The Community Development Director will also be part of the RDA Secretariat.
Science International Launches Campaign for 'Open Data in a Big Data World'
Four of the major international science organizations—ICSU, ISSC, IAP, and TWAS*—have come together to develop and support an Accord on 'Open Data in a Big Data World'. CODATA and WDS played a role in the creation of the Accord, which includes a set of guiding principles on open access to Big Data that necessarily protects the scientific process and ensures that developing countries can participate more fully in the global research enterprise. Over the next 12 months, the campaign will look to collect endorsements for the Accord from other science, education, and policy bodies, with final results anticipated in third quarter 2016.
An overview of the key issues in Open Data in a Big Data World can be accessed here, while a press release from Science International on the Accord can be found here.
Call for Papers: Advances in Data Modelling and Knowledge Representation for Research Data
The Data Science Journal has put out a Call for Papers for a special issue devoted to 'Advances in Data Modelling and Knowledge Representation for Research Data'.
This special issue seeks contributions from the Data Science community on the development, implementation, and evolution of data models and ontologies—including the use of knowledge representation languages—in advancing the capabilities of research data systems. We welcome submissions that report on empirical research that is completed or in progress, as well as pieces that can clearly articulate grand challenges and opportunities for advancing our current understanding of data models, research data curation systems, and knowledge representation, more generally.
Submissions may cover topics including but not limited to: design choices, harmonization, interoperability, requirements engineering, ontology development, sustainability, and education. Moreover, submissions can be of two types: Research Papers up to 8,000 words in length describing the outcomes and application of unpublished original research; and Practice Papers no longer than 3,000 words in length reporting upon or critiquing a particularly difficult aspect of doing one of the topics related to the special issue’s focus.
The deadline for submissions is 31 March 2016, with publication expected in December 2016, and the details of the call can be found here: Data Science Journal Call for Papers
The Data Science Journal levies an Article Processing Charge of £350 for each article published. Please contact the Editor-in-Chief, Sarah Callaghan, if you have any questions or think you will have difficulty meeting this cost.
I would like to introduce a new initiative of DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services) in the Netherlands. During the International Open Access Week last month, DANS launched, together with the Dutch publisher Brill, a new Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Research Data Journal is a digital-only, open access journal, which documents deposited datasets through the publication of data papers. The journal concentrates on the Social Sciences and the Humanities, covering history, archaeology, language and literature in particular.
Data papers are scholarly publications of medium length containing a non-technical description of a dataset and putting the data in a research context. Each paper gets a persistent identifier providing publication credits to the author.
Data papers call attention to particular research datasets, which may increase the likelihood that the datasets could be re-used or re-purposed by other researchers in the future. Additional benefits are that they are peer-reviewed, can be listed on CVs, and can accumulate citations just like traditional journal articles. This way they provide important incentives for researchers to put time and effort into preparing their datasets for public access.
The DANS Research Data Journal is an enhanced publication in more than one respect. The text is enhanced with direct links to datasets in the long-term repository. Additionally, the journal is enriched with features that contribute to greater usability of the content in terms of overview and navigation by adding background information and various forms of visualization. Where possible, data can be previewed and explored online, rather than through time-consuming downloads and offline applications. In short, an enhanced data paper provides an integrated view of data in their research context.
At DANS we hope that this initiative will stimulate researchers in the Netherlands and abroad to make their data more easily available to others.
