I am at the ICSU (International Council for Science) General Assembly in Auckland, New Zealand, 31 Aug – 3 Sept 2014. ICSU has been described here as ‘the United Nations for Science’. As such it provides an international voice for the importance and role of science in human society, internationally. Its mission is ‘to strengthen international science for the benefit of society’ and as such the role of science in supporting evidence-based policy making is a big theme.  CODATA, of course, is part of the ‘ICSU family’: were are an interdisciplinary body of ICSU and we were established in 1966 as the ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology. CODATA supports the ICSU mission ‘by promoting improved scientific data management as use’.

This is my first time at an ICSU General Assembly and it is fascinating to see the workings of this international, non-governmental organisation that brings together scientists from all around the world.

CODATA is heavily involved in various activities at this ICSU General Assembly…

Already, yesterday, Sunday 31 August, I was on a panel to discuss with ICSU’s National and International Scientific Union members a draft report – towards which CODATA and ICSU-WDS have contributed – which will lay out ICSU’s position on the issues of Open Access, Open Scientific Data and the use metrics for the evaluation of scientific contributions. The group putting together the report was chaired by John Ball of the University of Oxford: among others Mark Thorley, CODATA EC Member; John Helliwell, IUCr Delegate to CODATA; Mustapha Mokrane, ED of ICSU-WDS and I all contributed to the report.

Today, Mon 1 Sept 2014, I shall – very rapidly – introduce the CODATA Poster as part of the ‘Poster Expresso’ event!

This evening, CODATA is co-organising, with the Royal Society, a side event on Open Science and Open Data. This will feature an introductory presentation from CODATA President Huadong Guo and then a discussion of the Open Data agenda from Geoffrey Boulton. A panel featuring representatives of ICSU members countries as well as of the Global Young Academy will respond to the issues. The meeting will be chaired by Kari Raivio, Past President of the Finnish Academy of Sciences and former Vice President of ICSU.

Kari Raivio also chaired the ICSU Review of CODATA which will be the subject of a session at the ICSU GA tomorrow, Tue 2 Sept 2014. Professor Raivio will outline the process for the review and the findings and recommendations of the report. CODATA President Professor Huadong Guo will then provide our response and show how we have already put into practice many of these recommendations.

I am currently in Nairobi, Kenya, for the CODATA Workshop on Open Data for Science and Sustainability in Developing Countries (SSDC), 6-8 August 2014.  This workshop has been organised by the longstanding CODATA Task Group on Preservation of and Access to Scientific and Technical Data in/for/with Developing Countries (or PASTD for short!)

This Task Group has organised an impressive series of research and training workshops in a host of developing countries over the last decade or so.  Some of these are listed on the Task Group’s page.

The Nairobi SSDC workshop is hosted at the United Nations Offices in Nairobi and supported by a number of organisations, including UNESCO and Kenyan Ministry of Information and Communication.  GEO, the Group on Earth Observations have provided funds for delegates from Tanzania and Madagascar to attend.  The ICSU World Data System and the Research Data Alliance are also represented.  See the Workshop Site for the full list of co-organisers and supporting organisations.

The purpose of the Nairobi SSCD Workshop is threefold:

1. to describe and showcase the accomplishments of the participating organizations and other contributors in using research data and ICTs and in developing open knowledge environments to reduce the digital research divide during the last ten years. 
2. to describe the strategies and future objectives of the sponsoring and participating organizations and discuss their common interests in this area, with special consideration for the UN’s post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and ICSU’s Future Earth research program in developing countries. 
3. Develop and endorse a Guideline for Implementation of Principles of Preservation of and Open Access to Research Data in Developing Counties.

It will be interesting to help prepare the principles and the guideline on implementation in the context of an African perspective on the needs for and equity of Open data.  I hope to learn a great deal this week and I hope that what comes out of this workshop can have a positive impact on genuinely international movement towards Open data culture and practice.  I shall draw attention to the Principles and Guidelines when they are available.

The workshop is preceded by a two-day training workshop, hosted by the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.  The workshop will cover Open data principles and policy, issues of Intellectual Property, as well as practical training sessions in data analysis, particularly relating to geospatial data.

It promises to be an exciting week – more soon I hope!

Professor GUO Huadong, President of CODATA gives the opening keynote

There is little doubt that Big Data is a hot topic. Yet while the significance for Big Data may be demonstrable in certain research areas, there is also a lot of hype (particularly in relation to commercial applications), and its corollary, therefore, scepticism. Convened by CODATA and co-sponsored by a number of important international organisations, the International Workshop on Big Data for International Scientific Programmes took place on 8-9 June in Beijing, and aimed to shed more considered light on the potential role of Big Data in such international and interdisciplinary research activities.

As an interdisciplinary body of ICSU, the International Council for Science, CODATA has a strategic commitment to raise the profile of data issues in ICSU-sponsored programmes like Future Earth and Integrated Research on Disaster Risk. CODATA believes it can play an important role in improving understanding of challenges and opportunities relating to Big Data international scientific programmes where the integration and analysis of sometimes very large, but often complex and diverse datasets will be essential for achieving research goals which aim to improve decision-making on critical issues for humankind and the environment.

Statement of Recommendations and Actions

As a first, practical step towards focusing attention on the potential of Big Data for international scientific programmes, the workshop participants and sponsoring organisations, agreed a Statement of Recommendations and Actions which is published today. The Statement recognises that Big Data ‘present particularly significant challenges and notable opportunities for transdisciplinary, international research programmes’ as well as for scientific data services and infrastructure providers. It makes a series of recommendations for the sponsors of international research programmes in order to help such programmes take better advantage of the Big Data age:

1. Respond to the importance of Big Data for international scientific programmes
2. Exploit the benefits of Big Data for society
3. Improve understanding of Big Data through international collaboration
4. Promote universal access to Big Data through global research infrastructures
5. Explore and address the challenges of Big Data stewardship
6. Encourage capacity building and skills development in Big Data science
7. Foster development of policies to maximise exploitation of Big Data

The recommendations are followed by more specific actions for a CODATA-convened Working Group on Big Data for International Scientific Programmes. These actions specify useful contributions that such a Working Group can make in improving understanding of the implications of Big Data for interdisciplinary and societally-relevant research, as well as the policy and stewardship challenges involved with Big Data.

1. Produce case studies in Big Data for international scientific programmes
2. Promote sharing of Big Data solutions across scientific disciplines
3. Research policy, ethical and legal issues for Big Data
4. Research stewardship and sustainability challenges for Big Data

CODATA President, Professor GUO Huadong and former CODATA Secretary General, Dr. Robert Chen chairing the closing panel discussion

The Working Group will be convened in order to hold a first meeting, to define in more detail its workplan, at SciDataCon 2014, the International Conference on Data Sharing and Integration for Global Sustainability, in New Delhi in November. Please contact Simon Hodson, CODATA Executive Director, if you’d like to be involved.

Preparing such a Statement, if it is to be meaningful, is not a task that any one organisation can do in isolation: invited as co-sponsors for the workshop were a number of international organisations with an interest in data stewardship (our sister organisations the ICSU World Data System), data interoperability (the Research Data Alliance), data sharing and reuse (the Group on Earth Observation) as well as international collaborations involved in interdisciplinary research (Future Earth, IRDR and the International Society for Digital Earth), as well as our hosts the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (RADI). It is hoped that these organisations will also collaborate on the Working Group.

CODATA Secretary General, Professor Sara Graves, chairing the Opening Ceremony

Running over two days, the workshop featured four keynotes and twenty-one presentations from distinguished researchers. The opening ceremony was attended by over 100 participants and included agenda setting statements from representatives of sponsoring organisations. The workshop closed with a panel session, chaired by CODATA President Huadong Guo and former CODATA Secretary General, Bob Chen. The discussions were lively and engaged, focussing on finalising the Statement of Recommendations and Actions. The CODATA Workshop on Big Data Programme Book. Further discussion of the substantive issues tackled at the workshop and of the proposed Working Group activities will appear in due course.

The CODATA Prize is a major biennial award made by the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) which is an interdisciplinary body of ICSU, the International Council for Science.

Purpose and Criteria

This award:

• acknowledges outstanding achievement in the world of scientific and technical data;
• is given in recognition either of a one time achievement or of an achievement over time;
• is given, in preference, to an individual;
• recognises work carried out in fields of importance to scientific and technical data, such as data management, evaluation, dissemination, access issues, international cooperation, knowledge discovery, archiving or related subjects.

Nominations should be sure to address these criteria.

Prize Award

The 2014 CODATA Prize will be presented at SciDataCon 2014, 2-5 November 2014, New Delhi, India.  The recipient of the Prize will be presented with a commemorative piece of art and will also receive financial support to travel to New Delhi to deliver a Prize lecture at SciDataCon 2014.

Procedure for Nominations

Nominations may be made by CODATA National and Union Members, Supporting Organisations and Task Groups and should use the attached form: CODATA Prize Nominations 2014 Form-v02.

Nominations should be submitted to Simon Hodson, CODATA Executive Director:

The deadline for nominations is 21 July 2014.

Past Winners

Past winners of the CODATA Prize are listed at http://www.codata.info/archives/prize.html

CODATA Prize 2014 Committee

The CODATA Prize 2014 will be judged by a Committee composed of:

• Huadong Guo, CODATA President
• Takashi Gojobori, CODATA Vice-President
• Sara Graves, CODATA Secretary General
• John Broome, CODATA Treasurer

The programme for the ICSU CODATA Workshop on Big Data for International Scientific Programmes which is taking place in Beijing on 8-9 June has now been finalised and is available here: CODATA Big Data Workshop Programme-FINAL.

The workshop is convened with a number of international partners, including the ICSU World Data System, Future Earth, Integrated Research on Disaster Risk, the Research Data Alliance, the Group on Earth Observations, the International Society for Digital Earth, and the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).  The workshop aims to provide a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges of ‘Big Data’ for international collaborative science programmes, and to promote international and cross-disciplinary collaboration, in the age of Big Data.

It is intended that proceedings and a report of the workshop will be published in the CODATA Data Science Journal, while a ‘statement’ or position piece will be submitted to a high impact publication. Above all, the workshop brings together Big Data experts and researchers involved in international research programmes and identify opportunities for future collaboration to facilitate specific research objectives: the objective is that such discussions should help set the agenda for CODATA to help convene collaborative activities in support of ‘Big Data for International Science’.  Likewise, these themes will feed into SciDataCon 2014, the International Conference on Data Sharing and Integration for Global Sustainability, in New Delhi in November 2014.

Please note that the workshop is by invitation only and the programme is published for information.

CODATA has decided to extend the deadline for proposals for new Task Group and to renew existing Task Groups.  The new and absolute deadline for Task Group Proposals is 30 May.

Details of how proposals will be evaluated, the responsibilities of Task Groups and how CODATA supports Task Groups are provided here and in the covering documentation to the proposal form.

Submissions should be made on the appropriate form for New Task Groups Proposals (CODATA TG New 2014-Form-v04-Final) or for Task Groups Renewal Proposals (CODATA TG Renewal 2014-Form-v01-Final).

Proposals should be submitted to Simon Hodson, CODATA Executive Director at the e-mail address below:

Proposals are peer reviewed and also assessed by the Executive Committee. On this basis the Executive Committee will make recommendations to the 29th CODATA General Assembly, to be held in New Delhi, 6-7 November 2014, just after SciDataCon 2014.

CODATA, in collaboration with CODATA-China is delighted to invite applications from young researchers, research leaders and managers of research institutes in countries with emerging and developing economies to participate in the CODATA International Training Workshop in Big Data for Science, Beijing, 4-20 June 2014.  Participation for successful applicants will be financially supported, thanks to a grant from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).  The deadline for applications is 16 April.  Further details, application instructions and the application form are available here.

Data Science and International Collaboration for the Big Data Age

New types of ‘mega-science’ facilities and sensors are generating streams of digital data from telescopes, video cameras, traffic monitors, magnetic resonance imaging machines, and biological and chemical sensors monitoring the environment. This is a Big Data age, and it presents many exciting opportunities to make scientific research more productive, to accelerate discovery and innovation, and thereby to address key environmental, developmental and societal challenges.

The training program offered aims to engage participants with a number of facets of data science and data management in the age of Big Data.  Topics include, but are not limited to, interdisciplinary applications of data intensive research, data management policies, cloud computing, visualization and data infrastructure development.

Through an intensive programme of lectures and workshop activities, the course will promote interaction and exchange of knowledge between experts and participants.  It is intended that participants should benefit greatly from participation in a group from widely varying academic and national backgrounds.

A number of activities will be organized involving elite Chinese scientists, in order to promote knowledge sharing and to develop opportunities for future exchanges and collaboration.  Participants will benefit also from visits to a number of leading research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  In these visits, participants will have the opportunity to learn from the scientific approach, management expertise, knowledge development and practical application which characterize activities at CAS institutes working at the frontiers of research.

The first Call for Abstracts for Oral Presentations and Sessions at SciDataCon 2014 has now been released.  Proposals for Papers and Sessions are invited under the conference theme of Data Sharing and Integration for Global Sustainability and a number of related sub-themes and topics.  Further details are available on the conference website.  The deadline for submissions is 25 May 2014.

Registration for the conference, which takes place in New Delhi, 2-5 November 2014, is also now available.

SciDataCon 2014 is co-organised by CODATA and our sister organisation, the ICSU World Data System, with the support of the Indian National Science Academy and a Local Organising Committee.  The International Scientific Programme Committee has also been announced – it will be co-chaired by CODATA Past-President, Professor Krishan Lal of and Professor Paul Berkman of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.  With genuinely global participation, this is intended to be a landmark conference addressing various issues relating to data and international research.

CODATA-China

The First Scientific Data Conference, organised by the Chinese National Committee for CODATA (CODATA-China), was recently held in Beijing, on 24-25 February 2014.  Entitled Big Research Data and Data Science, the conference aimed to improve understanding of the central issues in the era of Big Data, to promote multidisciplinary communication, to help the development of young data scientists, to encourage revitalisation of traditional research approaches and to contribute to and support the Chinese national strategy to promote innovation.

Professor Guo Huadong, President of CODATA, addresses the First Scientific Data Conference, organised by CODATA-China

The conference received a congratulatory message from Academician Ding Zhongli, president of CODATA-China.  Professor Huang Xiangyang, vice-president of CODATA-China chaired the opening ceremony. Academician Guo Huadong, president of CODATA, Professor Wangfan, deputy director of the Bureau of Facility Support and Budget, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Professor Cao Jinghua, deputy director of the Bureau of International Co-operation CAS, each attended the conference and delivered welcome speeches at the opening ceremony.  More than 400 experts, scholars and students from over 100 research units participated in the conference, making it a significant success.

Participants in the auditorium at CODATA-China’s First Scientific Data Conference

Spanning two days, the conference featured two plenary sessions and fourteen breakout sessions. There were four major keynotes, three invited reports and three business reports. Academician Guo Huadong, Academician Chen Runsheng, Academician Wang Maohua and Professor Meng Xiaofeng were invited as keynote speakers.  The keynotes focused on the hot issues in the Big Data era, including integration and notation of Big Data, development opportunities and major challenges for science and technology.

The breakout sessions included both technical sessions and open forums. The technical sessions involved Big Data issues in a range of research areas, including earth and space science, life sciences and medicine, material science, agricultural and rural informatics, physics and chemistry, as well as Big Data analysis and processing technology, linked data and information recommendation, DOI registration, cloud computing, data discovery and visualisation.

CODATA-China’s First Scientific Data Conference

At the closing ceremony, Dr. Li Jianhui, secretary-general of CODATA-China, made a concluding speech and announced the forthcoming book, soon to be published by Science China Press, on Scientific Research Activity in the Big Data Era, which covers many of the themes of the conference. The best papers from the conference will be published in the CODATA Data Science Journal.  The conference is one of the most successful academic activities to have taken place during the thirty years since CODATA-China was established.

In collaboration with CAS, RADI (the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth), CODATA-China and other organisations, CODATA will convene an International Workshop on Big Data and International Scientific Programmes: Challenges and Opportunities which will take place in Beijing in June 2014.  More details soon!

CODATA International’s Officers, Executive Committee and Executive Director are currently meeting at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities for CODATA’s annual planning meeting.  We would like to congratulate CODATA-China for organising this important conference and we look forward to future collaborations.  Many thanks go to the CODATA-China Secretariat, Dr. Li Jianhui, Ms. Zhang Hui and Ms. Li Chang for this post and for their hard work convening the conference.