This is the fifteenth in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October 2023.  Daisy Selematsela is a candidate for the role of CODATA Vice-President or Executive Committee Ordinary Member. She was nominated by South Africa. 

CODATA Executive member candidacy 2023 – 2025

Daisy contributed to the former ICSU (International Council for Scientific Union); ICSU Regional Office for Africa and CODATA on a number of forums since 2007, contributed to position papers, coordinated workshops, chaired conference sessions and made numerous local and international presentations on areas related to ICSU and CODATA objectives. She has served CODATA in the following areas:

Data Science Journal Review – corresponding Editor 2009

Executive member of International Council for Science Union (ICSU SCID) ad Hoc Committee on Information and Data in 2007.Executive member of (ICSU EDC Panel) International Science Union World Data Centre Panel 2008.

Served as ex-officio member of the South African National Committee for CODATA for 11 years that hosted the 2010 CODATA General Assembly in Cape Town.

Chair of International Council for Science: Committee on Data for Science & Technology (ICSU: CODATA) Task Group on Data Sources for Sustainable Development in SADC 2007 -2011.

Contributed to the prototype proposal, development and hosting of the World Data Centre on Biodiversity and Human Health through SAEON (South African Earth Observation Network);

Member of CODATA Task Group on Preservation of and Access to Scientific and Technical Data in/for/with Developing Countries. Co-chairs: CODATA – WDS joint subgroup until 2021.

Daisy served as the Chairperson of South African National Committee for CODATA 2021 -2023 and CODATA Executive Board as ordinary member.

Daisy serves on a number of scientific bodies and a as an editorial board member of a number of journals and the Global Change Research Data Publishing and Repository and a reviewer of several programs.

She serves on a number of national boards and Advisory Councils. Internationally she is a former Board member of Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) and Board of Directors of ORCID (represent EMEA – East Asia, Middle East and Africa) and Research4Life.

She was part of the Founding and Executive Members of the International Data Forum (IDF) 2007-2010. Instrumental in the drafting NRF (National Research Foundation) Statement on Open Access for grant funding; Statement on ORCID ID and Predatory Publishing.

She holds a PhD in Information Science and is also Professor of Practice of Information and Knowledge Management of the University of Johannesburg.; a Fellow of the Higher Education Resource Service for Women in Higher Education (HERS) South Africa and Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, USA. Acknowledged with the Knowledge Management Award in 2016 by the World Education Congress.

The global South requires a voice to champion the positioning of open science and open data challenges and cement CODATA Decadal program in the region. The ISC Open Access project known as ‘Opening the record of science’ which is based on the premise that science is a public good and that the bulk of research is produced using public resources speaks to scholarship challenges in the south. The global South is disadvantaged in accessing free to read publications and the ISC 8 principles explores the role of publishing in the scientific enterprise to optimise the access and benefits of science to wider audiences globally which embraces the narrative of social justice as it applies to the global south. Social justice in this context of open science and open data relates to the information society narrative, and how restriction of access to knowledge led to marginalisation and exclusion. As a librarian and information specialist we encounter researchers and emerging researchers who requires guidance and understanding of the open science and open data processes as part of their research lifecycle as the policies and repositories are developed and hosted in academic and research libraries. The issues of data literacy is core to the training of researchers and students wherein the CODATA Data Schools play a role in raising awareness and understanding of data science. My role at the CODATA level will be instrumental in championing global synergies with the National Committees. 

This is the thirteenth in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October, 2023. Dong Liang is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by the International Society for Digital Earth.

We live in a time where digital technologies offer unprecedented potential for progress and development, but whether that potential is realized will depend on global collaboration, open data, and accessible knowledge. As a candidate for Ordinary Member of the CODATA Executive Committee, I’m excited to share my years of experience in bringing together people and information by advancing open data science and international collaboration. My expertise encompasses remote sensing, international partnerships, and applications of big data for solutions to global sustainability challenges. As Assistant Director-General at the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (CBAS), I lead the effort to utilize big data analytics for evidence-based policymaking. My most important achievements in this domain have used Big Earth Data concepts and methods for data-driven decision-making and for tracking progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For an equitable and prosperous future globally, it is essential to enable developing nations to effectively leverage data science. Therefore, my recent efforts have highlighted the significance of digital public goods for policy and decision support systems to achieve the SDGs. 

During my long-standing direct and indirect engagement with CODATA, I have played an active role in fostering connections and partnerships among different members from across the globe to promote knowledge and data sharing. Over the past several years, I have also contributed significantly to organizing and facilitating CODATA events. I took part in the organization of the CODATA 45th Anniversary Ceremony in 2011 and helped organize the Workshop on Big Data for International Scientific Programmes in 2014. Both of these were milestone events that shaped CODATA’s future strategic plan by convening stakeholders to discuss challenges and opportunities in advancing open data science globally. The meetings also highlighted the need for data-intensive science and the utilization of big data for significant scientific endeavors. 

My experience serving on diverse data committees has equipped me with valuable insights into evolving policy issues and provided me with the opportunity to share perspectives from China. I have also made significant contributions to two partnerships under CODATA’s “Hand in Hand” program, including the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) program and International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE). These partnerships helped expand CODATA’s international cooperation and impact. Furthermore, I have led workshops and facilitate agreements between CODATA and major programs like the Digital Belt and Road Program (DBAR), which strengthened CODATA’s network and cooperation internationally. 

Establishing consensus plays an important role in clearing obstacles related to data sharing, accessibility, and interoperability. Hence, my efforts have consistently been focused on fostering connections between various groups, extending beyond my involvement with CODATA. Throughout the years, I have successfully achieved this objective by organizing workshops that link policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders. These collaborative endeavors have identified challenges and opportunities for open data. 

I have also been a vocal advocate for open science and data-driven development while serving in editorial roles, standards committees, and advisory positions both nationally and internationally. As Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese National Committee of ISDE and DBAR, I actively led official engagements and major international open data efforts to bring data and information to people while building their capacity to use it. I have been a proponent of open science, playing a key role in co-developing the Big Earth Data concept and providing valuable contributions to the SDG Big Data Platform. 

Obstacles still exist in fully harnessing the global potential of open data science. Cultivation of capabilities and the training of data professionals, especially for under-resourced regions, is critically important. As Ordinary Member of the CODATA Executive Committee, my efforts will be directed towards training and development of international research networks to expand data literacy and data skills for global sustainability. A pivotal aspect of this endeavor will be cross-border cooperation to fully harness the vast potential of the concept of open data. I strongly believe that through dedicated collaboration, we can build truly inclusive, ethical, and impactful open data infrastructure and policies that empower people through data. Together, we can drive progress on shared global challenges and usher in a new era of discovery to advance CODATA’s vision and mission.

This is the twelfth in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October, 2023.  Marc Nyssen  is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine.

Marc Nyssen has been active in the fields of medical informatics and biomedical engineering, as a researcher, as a developer, as a professor and as a volunteer. Pioneering in the medical internet applications, advocating Open Data and the adherence to the FAIR principles. He designed and developed several ICT systems in health care, among which the nation-wide electronic prescription system, fully deployed in Belgium. On the international level, he is devoted to the propagation of knowledge and experience world-wide via the IFMBE federation and the IUPESM union, also as promoter of several academic projects and education programs in Africa (RDC, Rwanda, Burundi, Niger) and in Cuba. Also since 10 years a member of the Flemish Data Privacy Authority.

The importance of sharing high quality data among scientists cannot be underestimated, therefore the data committees such as CODATA, especially in the ISC context are instrumental to improve data sharing, primarily in the scientific community but with impact on the whole world.

In my field “medical informatics”, I see two major challenges regarding data that could be addressed:

• the appropriate sharing of medical data, while protecting the privacy of the individual
• the rewarding of scientists who share quality and well documented data, resulting from their research.

To illustrate the importance of the first of these challenges just think of the way tests of new medication are performed: it would not be possible to include millions of patients; therefore potential rare side-effects cannot be detected; well controlled follow-up via appropriately encoded medical records would potentially save lives and hardship when carried out, perhaps over many years. But with respect of the privacy of the participants and their right to retract their data.

In this field, collaboration with the WHO would be a very interesting factor, possibly leading to a breakthrough.                                                                                                        

Scientists currently are judged mainly by the impact factors of their publications. Would it not be good to include an impact factor, related to the well documented quality data they provide to the scientific community?

I will gladly contribute to these and other matters regarding FAIR and Open data.

This is the eleventh in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October, 2023.  Leo Lahti  is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by Finland.

I have a background in computational science. Throughout my 20-year research career I have developed algorithmic solutions for data-intensive problems in a range of application fields from molecular life sciences to ecology, computational history, and computational social sciences. The focus of our research team is the analysis and modeling of complex natural and social systems, and the development of open data science frameworks that help to bridge the gap between theoretical and applied research.

After my doctoral degree (2010) at the Department of Information and Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland, I spent 7+ years abroad in central European research laboratories before establishing my own team at the University of Turku, Finland, where I was recently nominated as professor in Data Science.

I have advocated open science throughout my career, including the development of open research software in microbiome research and open government data analytics (altogether ~10,000 downloads/month), supported by regular international workshops in applied data science. I act currently as vice chair for the national coordination on open science in Finland. As part of this work, I led the working group that developed national policy on open access to research methods and infrastructures (2023). In addition, I am board member in Open Knowledge Finland NGO and its representative in the Ministry of Justice work group that is preparing an updated version for the law on public information in Finland. In 2021 I received national open science award by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies.

I joined CODATA as the national delegate for Finland in 2022, based on my activities in the relevant areas of research and research policy. As part of CODATA I have participated in the national forum and the Data Ethics work group, which will present its recent activities during the International Data Week in Salzburg, Austria. In addition, I have led the national branch in Finland, which brings together the relevant national actors. I am looking forward to continue this work and strengthen the links between CODATA and Northern Europe. I  am willing to develop data science training to promote CODATA mission and responsible openness, with a particular focus on the methods of data science in research and policy work.

This is the tenth in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October, 2023.  Virginia Murray is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. She was nominated by the UK.

It is an honour to be nominated again by the UK. To me CODATA’s National Members provide an important link to wider research communities. I would like to facilitate stronger engagement between the UK’s research community and the activities of CODATA and its other members. I would also use these links to enhance my contributions to CODATA’s Executive Committee. I engage closely with The Royal Society and UK Research and Innovation, who support the UK’s national membership of CODATA. I am also a member of the recently established UK International Research Data Initiatives Forum. This forum aims to enhance UK engagement with international initiatives relating to research data policy and practice, including CODATA.   

CODATA’s mission and role to connect data and people to advance science and improve our world is important as ever to help address global grand challenges, including in my own domain of global disaster risk reduction. 

Data is critical for the implementation of the landmark UN agreements of the Sendia Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the COP21’s Paris Climate Conference. With disasters increasing in intensity and severity globally, improving risk information across all types of hazards is critical to enhance our capacity to anticipate, prevent and respond to disaster risks from the local to the global scales. One barrier to sharing and using data effectively has been the lack of standardized definitions of hazards and a lack of guidance on the full range hazards such as hydrometeorological, biological and technological hazards and societal that need to be addressed in risk management. 

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the International Science Council (ISC) jointly established a Technical Working Group (TWG) in 2019 to identify the full scope of all hazards relevant to the Sendai Framework and the scientific definitions of these hazards. I was invited to chair the TWG with strong CODATA Executive Committee representation and partnership.  The TWG with invaluable participation from CODATA colleagues and the project secretariat engaged with scientists in many organisations and UN agency scientific partners to find out how, via consensus building, an all hazard list could best be developed. Outputs included the UNDRR-ISC Hazard Definition and Classification Review – Technical report released in July 2020, and the Hazard Information Profiles: Supplement to UNDRR-ISC Hazard Definition & Classification Review – Technical Report released in October 2021. 

In section 5.3.1, The Report of the Midterm Review of the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030,, this statement is made: 

‘Work undertaken with the International Science Council (ISC) [and UNDRR] and the engagement of more than 800 partners from scientific institutions, including national scientific advisers [with strong CODATA Executive Committee engagement], the research funding community and numerous international organizations, led to the groundbreaking Sendai Hazard Definition and Classification Review Technical Report. The report, which contains 302 hazard information profiles, is a key tool for building common definitions for developing comparable data sets for monitoring and review. It provides a common set of hazard definitions to governments and stakeholders to inform approaches, policies and investments, whether integrated in sectoral interventions or DRR strategies and actions.’ 

Again, with strong CODATA Executive Committee representation, have been invited to chair the UNDRR/ISC Steering Group for reviewing and updating the Hazard Information Profiles for the UN Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction to be held in May 2025.

Using the UNDRR/ISC Hazard Information Profiles and working in close collaboration with CODATA Executive Committee and IDPC I am now also engaged in supporting  Data Policy in Times of Crisis – CODATA, The Committee on Data for Science and Technology – something that, to me,  is vital to consider building our data to manage disasters. 

The implementation of this and related work remains a vital contribution that I hope, as an ordinary member of the CODATA Executive Committee, I could continue to contribute if elected for the next two years, alongside supporting CODATA to deliver the important wider priorities identified in its Strategic Plan 2023-2027.  

More widely, my current roles are as a public health doctor committed to improving health emergency and disaster risk management as well as data access and transparency for effective reporting.  I was appointed as Head of Global Disaster Risk Reduction (GDRR) for UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England) in April 2014 and am now a development lead for the new UKHSA Centre for Climate and Health Security. I am a member of the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) scientific committee and Co-Chair of IRDR’s Disaster Loss Data (DATA). I am  a co-chair of the WHO Thematic Platform Health and Disaster Risk Management Research Network, and by working in collaboration with this network, I am one of the editors of the WHO Guidance on Research Methods for Health and Disaster Risk Management, updated 2022. I am a visiting/honorary Professor and fellow at several universities.

This is the ninth in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October 2023.  Tyng-Ruey Chuang is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated bby the Academy of Sciences located in Taipei. 

I, Tyng-Ruey Chuang, was elected to the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member in 2018 and again in 2021. For the five years since I was first elected, I have had the privilege and pleasure working with colleagues in the CODATA Executive Committee and Secretariat, the CODATA members, and various data communities in advocating for greater research data sharing and reuse.

I wish to continue my service in CODATA to advance public and equitable access to research data, and to collaborate with the broader data communities to work forward a world where more data can be shared for the mutual benefits of the people. Today’s data landscape is changing very fast: Datasets from diverse sources – sciences, governments, businesses, citizens, etc. – are being used together to address pressing environmental and societal issues. As a society, we cannot say, however, that all useful datasets are now easily accessible and reusable to all people.

CODATA, as a multidisciplinary scientific body working with (and within) the International Science Council, is at a unique position to make strides in realizing the data for social good vision. To work toward this vision, CODATA would need to connect more to social sciences and humanities research associations, as well as to the global civil society. In particular, CODATA would need to engage with research institutions in Low- and Middle-income Countries (LMIC) and to actively seek participation from underrepresented research communities.

For the last 25 years I have been working with researchers from multiple disciplines on data management systems, copyrights and public licenses, open data policies, and research data infrastructures. I mostly work on collaborative projects. A central goal of these collaborations, always, is to make better use of research data. My training and experience in information science and engineering aligns strongly with the CODATA missions.

I collaborated with the Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute on a communal data workflow for the Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network. The project received a National Agricultural Science Award in 2019. Our work on the Sunflower Movement Archive has contributed to a year-long special exhibition at National Museum of Taiwan History on Social Movements in Post-War Taiwan. Both collaborations emphasize community involvement and the public’s access to research materials. We build and operate the depositar, an open repository freely available to researchers worldwide for the deposit, discovery, and reuse of research datasets.

I had been the public lead of Creative Commons Taiwan since its beginning in early 2003 until its transition to a community project in 2018. I co-led the Open Source Software Foundry (2003-2017). These two long-running projects were supported by Academia Sinica in Taipei to outreach to the general public, researchers, and policy makers in Taiwan about the principles and practices of public licenses and free software. Capacity building is an integral part of the two projects.

In addition to being a member of the CODATA Executive Committee (2018 – 2023), I served in CODATA’s International Data Policy Committee (2014 – 2019) and co-chaired the CODATA–WDS Task Group on Citizen Science and the Validation, Curation, and Management of Crowdsourced Data (2016 – 2018). The 2012 CODATA International Conference was held in Taipei; I led a team in Taiwan working with the CODATA Secretariat to organize the conference to a great success.

I am an Associate Research Professor at the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, with a joint appointment at both the Research Center for Information Technology Innovation and the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. I was a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, supported in part by a Fulbright senior research grant (2011-2012). I am on the Advisory Committee of Academia Historia, Taiwan. For several times I served as a board member of the Taiwan Association of Human Rights and of the Software Liberty Association of Taiwan.

I have published about 100 research articles. I frequently write for the general public on the topics of Internet (technologies and cultures), digital preservation, and data collaboration, among others. Here is a sampler of my writings for the public: on Open Access to Knowledge during Public Health Emergencies (in Chinese), on Openness, and on Planning for Long-Term Access to COVID-19 Memory Websites.

This is the eighth in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October 2023.  Elena Rovenskaya is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. She was nominated by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. 

Elena Rovenskaya is Principal Research Scholar and Director of the Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) Program https://iiasa.ac.at/web/asa.html at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. She is also Research Scholar at the Optimal Control Department of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia (currently on leave). 

Elena Rovenskaya served as Ordinary Member of CODATA Executive Committee in 2021-2023. 

Elena Rovenskaya has a background in applied mathematics and computer science. Broadly, her scientific interests lie in the fields of optimization, decision science, and mathematical modeling of complex socio-environmental systems. As one important avenue, recently, she has been focusing her research on using qualitative and quantitative methods to support decisions in settings dominated by uncertainty. 

In her work as the ASA Program Director, Elena Rovenskaya leads a highly international team of more than 100 researchers who focus their efforts on innovating in terms of methods, approaches, and data to be used to support sustainability transformation. ASA research is highly interdisciplinary and often transdisciplinary with many projects involving policymakers and citizens. As one example, Elena Rovenskaya leads Transformations within Reach project that aims to put forward recommendations on how decision-making systems and processes can be improved to catalyze sustainability transformations and identify effective levers of change for this: https://iiasa.ac.at/projects/TwR. 

In line with her research interests, Elena Rovenskaya was an active member of the CODATA Task Group “Advanced mathematical tools for data-driven applied systems analysis” https://codata.org/initiatives/task-groups/applied-systems-analysis/, which operated in 2021-2023. 

Elena Rovenskaya’s personal statement on the motivation to be considered for the role of an Ordinary Executive Committee Member:  

I am interested in this role because I am very much interested in facilitating a stronger linkage between data and modeling that serves to support decisions related to sustainability at global, national, and local scales. Modeling and policy demands pose specific needs and challenges in regard to data that should feed into models, such as interoperability, validation, non-numeric data – to name just a few. Private sector holds a wealth of data that could be used for sustainability research. Finding ways to use these data in the interests of the society is another important challenge.  

During my first term as Ordinary Member of CODATA Executive Committee (2021-2023), I learnt a lot on how CODATA works towards fulfilling its mission. As one highlight, during this period, I contributed to the development of the CODATA Strategic Plan, which was successfully finalized under the leadership of CODATA President and CODATA Executive Director.

I feel that my expertise in systems analysis, sustainability science, and international scientific collaboration, combined with my understanding of CODATA and challenges & opportunities associated with making research data FAIR will enable me to continue making a positive contribution to the proceedings of CODATA for another term as Ordinary Executive Committee Member. 

This is the seventh in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October 2023.  Toshihiro Ashino is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by Japan. 

My area of expertise is materials data, and I have conducted research on the development of ontologies for materials science and engineering. From 2014 to 2023, in the Japanese national project SIP (Strategic Innovation Promotion Program), I have been participating in the subject “Materials Integration” and have led research on data integration for materials design and materials database development.

In CODATA, I proposed the CODATA Task Group, “Exchangeable Materials Data Representation to support Scientific Research and Education”, which was accepted by the General Assembly in 2006, and co-chaired the group for two terms (2006-2008, 2008-2010).　I was also nominated by the Science Council of Japan at the CODATA General Assembly in 2018 to be a member of the EC and has supported CODATA’s activities by serving as a liaison to the TGFC, a traditional activity of CODATA, from 2018 to 2021.

In Japan, I chaired the CODATA sub-committee in the 24th and 25th term of the Science Council of Japan (2017-2023) and have been working to disseminate CODATA activities, including the release of the Japanese translation of “The Beijing Declaration on Research Data” in 2019. I and my colleagues are now organizing a new CODATA subcommittee for the 26th term of the Science Council of Japan from 2023 to 2025. In the Science Council of Japan, I am also a member of the International Science Data Subcommittee and the WDS Subcommittee.

In addition, as a vice president of the Japan Society of Information and Knowledge, I also collaborate with researchers who work with data archives and social science data. In recognition of these activities, I am involved in organizing several international and national academic conferences and symposiums related to open science, data sharing and international networking.

I am also working for standardization of materials data representation, participating a series of CEN workshops from 2009, He is also a member of the Japanese national liaison committee for CIPM (International Committee for Weights and Measures) and contributes to Digital-SI, which is currently one of the most important activities for CODATA. Materials data has been one of CODATA’s key areas since its foundation, and we will continue to promote this. As the use of research data becomes increasingly important internationally, and as advanced infrastructures for this use are being built and changing the way of research itself, CODATA’s activities will provide a common international platform for this. I will contribute to international cooperation for this purpose.

This is the sixth in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October 2023.  Richard Hartshorn is a candidate for the role of CODATA Vice-President or Executive Committee Ordinary Member. He was nominated by New Zealand. 

Previous and current positions in CODATA:

• Member of the Executive Committee 2018-2021 and 2022-2023
• Executive Committee Liaison to Digital Representation of Units of Measure (DRUM) Task Group 2018-2021 and 2022-2023
• Executive Committee Liaison to Task Group on Extension of InChI to Nanomaterials (2022-2023)
• Co-Chair of National Committees Forum
• Contributor to WP3 in the WorldFAIR project

Statement in support of the candidacy:

The CODATA Officers and Executive Committee have responsibility for implementing the strategic plan and its priority areas. The governance challenges come from the need to understand International Science Council (ISC) priorities while also building strong links with the CODATA national committees and scientific union leaderships with whom we work. These are all vital to achieving CODATA strategic goals. We must engage with more scientific unions, do so with intent, and focus on things data, across disciplines, if we are to meet the cross-domain challenges outlined in the CODATA Decadal Programme.

During two terms on the CODATA Executive Committee, nearly eight years (two terms) as Secretary General of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), and through other roles within IUPAC, I have demonstrated strategic leadership and gained significant experience in governance of international science-based organizations. Within the CODATA Executive Committee this has been particularly demonstrated through providing a scientific union perspective to committee deliberations and activities. I have served as Co-Chair of the CODATA National Committees forum, and led the establishment of the Aotearoa New Zealand Committee on Data in Research. Such background would be excellent preparation for further service on the Executive Committee, or as Vice President of CODATA.

I have been involved in the development of chemistry communication tools for many years and led the IUPAC Division of Chemical Nomenclature and Structure Representation (2010-13). I am also significantly involved in the International Chemical Identifier (InChI) Trust, both at a governance level as a member of the InChI Trust Board, and in InChI-based projects [the InChI is and will be a key tool in making chemical data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR)]. My leadership activities in chemistry have involved reaching international consensus among experts from around the world. This requires skills of diplomatic negotiations in situations where a very small staff need to work with a global membership, coping with the limitations of small organizations and yet still maintaining the global impact that satisfies the wider membership. My willingness to get involved is illustrated by the way my Executive Committee liaison role with the Digital Representation of Units of Measure (DRUM) Task Group has evolved to become more like that of a full task group member.

IUPAC is committed to continued innovation in nomenclature, terminology, other intellectual infrastructure, and particularly to developing tools for the use, global exchange, and archiving of digital chemical data. I have taken a strategic role in this area, including initiation and support of work that will lead to development of digital data standards in chemistry. My recent election to the IUPAC Executive Board (having completed my terms as Secretary General) and election to a CODATA role would reinforce the already strong relationship between IUPAC and CODATA through connections at both governance and task group/project levels. This means that I would bring significant expertise in a major discipline, as well as governance experience, to the CODATA Executive Committee.

This is the fifth in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October 2023.  Mercè is a candidate for the role of CODATA President. She was nominated by the USA, DDI Alliance and GO FAIR Foundation. 

If elected President, I would bring to CODATA my three decades of experience working with management, sharing, and analysis of scientific data, and working across scientific disciplines (astrophysics, astronomy, genetics, biomedicine, social sciences) and across sectors (academia, government, and industry). As CODATA works across all domains and seeks to address interdisciplinary data challenges, this exceptionally wide experience will be valuable to the organization.

I have had a close relationship with scientific data from the early parts of my career until now, from a variety of perspectives. First, as a researcher and scientific software engineer in astrophysics and as a leader of software development for information and data management systems in biotechnologies. Later, in academia, leading the development of data repositories in social sciences and the research data management at Harvard University, and as a co-author of the FAIR principles and the Data Citation principles, and in government, as Secretary of Open Government, leading open data, transparency, and civic participation. I am currently Head of Computational Social Sciences at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.

CODATA has a unique position as a research data organization directly connected to the International Science Council (ISC) to provide directives and best practices for working with data across sciences and influence data policy across nations. This unique position needs to be taken responsibly and effectively.  This is why, as a candidate for the presidency of CODATA, I want to emphasize being pragmatic, being collaborative, and being rigorous. What will this mean? I summarize below how each one of these values would translate to CODATA activities in the next four years:

Being Pragmatic

In the last decade, the field of research data sharing and management has contributed to three main advances: 1) expansion in the number of data repositories across practically all scientific fields, 2) a higher fraction of journals and funding organizations now encourage or require data sharing associated with the research results, and 3) a wide endorsement of the FAIR principles (for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, ad Reusable data), with an emphasis on cross-domain metadata for interoperability and reuse. Despite these advances, there are not yet many examples of cross-disciplinary data sharing, merging, and reuse that could advance scientific knowledge or help address societal challenges. I propose a pragmatic approach driven less by tools, policies, or standards, but more by the research problems at hand. That is, an approach that would identify relevant scientific and/or societal problems that need to be solved, followed by construction of new datasets that combine existing data from multiple fields, harmonizing them as new, rich research resources. Furthermore, the pragmatism should be applied to make those datasets easily usable by software tools and algorithms, and important aspect of the FAIR principles. In this case, the approach should focus on building datasets that integrate automatically with at least two tools from two different scientific fields that are working on the same problem.

Being Collaborative

Science is increasingly collaborative (albeit competitive). The term ´team science´ is now used to define the widely cross-disciplinary approach to the teams that are being created to solve scientific problems with the increase of data and computation. These teams usually include subject experts, data scientists, computational scientists, data curators, among others. CODATA should be ready to foster this cross-disciplinary collaboration for a more comprehensive, efficient, and better-quality research, but should go even further in being collaborative with other organizations and sectors. These are four ways in which I would increase the collaboration from CODATA:

1. Build strong ties with other research data organizations, mainly with the GO FAIR initiative, the Research Data Alliance, and the World Data System. This would mean meeting on a regular basis and continuing to define common projects, in which each organization can bring its unique strength, complement each other, and not duplicate efforts.
2. Be mindful of cross-disciplinary approaches when we define data sharing and reuse projects to advance on working with data for research. 
3. Bring data centers and archives to work more closely with research computing and supercomputing centers. For many research projects, data need to be close to the computing, and the computing to the data. Even in cases in which there is a federation of data resources, often there is lack of a user-friendly integration from the data resources to the national computing centers.
4. Collaborate across sectors. Research data are no longer (or perhaps have never been) created only for research and by researchers. There are vast amounts of data from industry and governments that can be very useful for research. CODATA has an influential, neutral, and broad position that can help to improve the data sharing among these three sectors: academia and/or research organizations, industry, and governments. In addition, it can foster the engagement of citizens to contribute data sharing for research.
5. Continue working across borders and continents, with an emphasis on collaborating with areas with which CODATA has not had an opportunity to work closely, such as Latin America and other parts of the global south.

Being Rigorous

Science is the pursuit of truth. And to continue being so, it must continue aiming to be rigorous, unbiased, not driven by ideologies, open and verifiable. For this, research data must be accessible and of high-quality, and the analysis must be aware of the biases, errors, and uncertainties that might be drawn from not complete or not representative data. At the same time, access to and use of data must be done responsibly, following rigorous approaches, especially when data are sensitive or private. CODATA can help in these areas by: 1) exploring the standardization of levels and requirements of access to data, from completely open to increasingly restrictive to facilitate collaboration across groups and regions on private or sensitive data, 2) providing guidance for infrastructure as well as tools that help work with private or sensitive data responsibly but without losing data utility, and 3) promoting transparency of AI algorithms, scientific and statistical tools that process and analyze data so they can be validated by others, and 4) improve access to training and education in statistics, well-designed research, and applied qualitative, quantitative, and computational methods to improve the way we teach science.