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.

This is the fourth 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.  Audrey Masizana is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. She was nominated by Botswana

Dr Audrey Masizana is a Senior Lecturer and former Head of Department of Computer Science at the University of Botswana. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from University of Manchester UK (2004). He is also Fellow of Botswana Academy of Sciences (FBAS) since 2021 and Global Health International Scholar of  University of Pennsylvania, USA (2023-2026).

As a member of Botswana CODATA National Committee, she is a strong advocate and passionate of the adoption of Open Data Open Science Policies and Instruments locally and across the continent. Currently she is the Chair of the development of  the Botswana Open Data Policy established by the Botswana Presidential Task Force (Smart Bots) in March 2023, the outcome of which could provide the leadership and adoption in the African SADC region. In 2021 she was elected to serve for 2 years into the Executive Committee of the CODATA for International Science Council.

She has over the years gained enormous experience in spear heading academic networking platforms including  chairing conferences such as Information Technology for Development (IASTED Africa 2014, 2016), International Conference in Cyber-Security and Information systems conference series referenced in ICICIS 2016 and here.  Also, the International Data Week (IDW 2018) spearheaded by the University of Botswana. She has served as a member of the African Technical Advisory Committee which formed part of the first committee that established the African Open Science Platform in 2017. She is also one of the innovators of the VizAfrica Network and chaired the second VizAfrica Conference in 2019 delivered in collaboration with CODATA. She continues to serve in the organizing committees of the subsequent IDW and Viz Africa conferences.

As Head pf Department,  she made contributions to the promotion of science and technology by providing leadership in the establishment of fostered local and regional collaborative projects around Hi Performance Computing (HPC) & Data Science Research, eHealth Research , Intelligent Systems Research and Open Data. She has served at national bodies such as the National Cyber Security Strategy Development Committee (2016) and its new Implementation Committee (2021).

Audrey is passionate in interdisciplinary post graduate research around Scientific Application of Data for Intelligent Decision Making for which she also conducts external examining for other universities. She is a well-seasoned researcher with  50+ publications. Currently serves as a Project Investigator of a project in Botswana named Kamogano  that aims to evaluate the flow of clinical information from and to the front-line clinicians within Botswana Health Information Systems in collaboration with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). She is also a PI of another named MLCOVID19 conducted by the University of Botswana which aims to apply machine learning techniques to predict COVID-19 progression amongst patients in Botswana through risk analysis on survival and mortality rates.

This is the third 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. Pam Maras is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. She was nominated by the International Union of Psychological Science.

Pam Maras was elected first female President of the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS) in 2016 she is now past-president on  IUPsyS Executive Committee, she is a Fellow, Past President, and Past Honorary General Secretary of the British Psychological Society and a Chartered Scientist (CSci) with the UK Science Council. 

As the Global body for psychological science IUPsyS is a  founding Union of the ISC. Over two million psychologists are represented by IUPsyS members, who collect or use data in primary, secondary or published form;  e.g. on evidence informed  policy direction,  public behaviour compliance and mental health during the pandemic. 

Pam  represents IUPsyS on CODATA and is a DRUM Ambassador. She is committed to Equality in Science and represents IUPsyS on the Standing Committee on Gender Equality in Science (SCGES). 

Pam is Emerita Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, London and where she held senior University roles including chair of the independent committee for institutional compliance with ethical requirements including data stewardship. Pam has attracted considerable research funding with international  collaborations, including in Africa, Australasia, China, Europe (including France, Netherlands, Spain, and Italy), the Nordic countries, North and Latin America, and South-East Asia. She is often asked to comment in media and has provided evidence to policy makers. She has over one hundred publications most recent of which were independently rated as internationally excellent or outstanding in the 2021 UK national assessment of research excellence.

Pam’s research  moved from experimental psychology to  applying psychological science to social situations in education, including testing psychometric measures in different geographical contexts to ensure cultural relevance. Data collection has included surveys and quasi experimental designs. She believes regions should set their own agenda and be able to engage in the ‘open science movement’ as contributors and recipients.  

CODATA is in a unique position in the ISC as the global body to represent international science in all its forms in the promotion and dissemination of science. The ethical and open access of data for public good can only be achieved through geographic and disciplinary collaboration, which includes all areas of the science community and  all regions of the world.  Behavioural sciences should  be an equal partner in international science.  A challenge is to ensure that scientists collectively ‘buy in’ to processes including for data that are less easy to curate from the social and behavioural sciences. 

As a psychologist Pam’s contribution if elected would at an interdisciplinary level include representing and integrating behavioural science into the adoption of principles and policy arising out of CODATA and partners, and at a disciplinary level on human behaviour; both of scientists and on applications of scientific discovery including in areas of interdisciplinary relevance.  Pam’s expertise is relevant to the impact of data, and the ethical development and implementation of policy. This can only  be effectively achieved with integrity if common processes are not only designed but adopted; the latter is likely to be harder than the former and requires a shared understanding and commitment to act and cooperate  – behavioural scientists such as psychologists are  essential to this endeavour.

This is the second 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.  Phil Bourne is a candidate for the role of CODATA Vice-President. He was nominated by the USA. 

CODATA Statement:  Impacting  the Next Generation

CODATA is a respected, impactful organization. Its strategic connection to the International Science Council gives it a rare platform for driving impact by serving and anticipating the data needs of the world’s scientists, data stewards, and citizen scientists. Hence my interest.

I have spent my whole 40+ year career working with data and the science of data in particular. My interest in data stems from my science as an established biomedical researcher having published over 350 papers, 4 books and started 4 companies. My journey with data led me to co-develop the RCSB Protein Data Bank which became an exemplar scientific database and associated ontology. I was an author of the FAIR principles, the first chief data officer of the National Institutes of Health, a co-founder and the first President of FORCE11, a past member of the US Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI), Founding Editor in Chief of the open access journal PLOS Computational Biology and currently the Stephenson Founding Dean of the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia where we are currently teaching data science to 1000 (!) undergraduate and graduate students. It is this later development which drove me to engage with CODATA as a member of the US National Committee and to write a blog on what I perceive as parallel universes which has received considerable attention, starting with the US National Committee for CODATA. Let me explain.

If I ask those 1000 students and the faculty that teach them at the University of Virginia what they know of CODATA, it will be mostly blank stares. This is unfortunate as both universes have so much to offer each other. To elaborate. CODATA has global reach, the ability to convene and a mandate to do so through a hardworking collection of volunteers. Data science is an explosive field being taught and fielding research in every discipline in just about every institution of higher education. Surely it is time to bring these groups together in ways previously unexplored. This is what I would like to help CODATA with. Data science has the Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA – I am on the Board) and a variety of chapters within computer science and engineering societies worldwide, but its organization is still very much in a formative stage. There lies the opportunity, a well established organization with a 57 year history meets a fledgling field at a time of unprecedented growth in that field driven by data that is impacting everyone on the planet. It’s time to impact the next generation.  There will not be a better time.

Talk is cheap. In terms of action. I can see various discussions  to begin the engagement. A real doozy would be to have CODATA and data scientists discuss the implication of data generation through generative AI. Thus, if elected, I would work with the CODATA leadership and broader community to find synergies and new areas of collaboration for academic data scientists and data practitioners and policy makers. Possible examples could include a broader partnership in the CODATA/RDA Schools of Research Data Science with ADSA, as well as bringing the successful models in WorldFAIR and other CODATA exemplars like the International Data Policy Committee and the DRUM task group to the academic data science community.   I stand ready to support the new CODATA strategic plan, to be a boundary spanner with other organizations and agencies, and to advise the CODATA secretariat and community as other disruptive technological and policy changes occur.

This is the first 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.  Andrew Young is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by Australia. 

I am a plant ecological geneticist working in the field of biodiversity science at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia.  My primary role for the last eight years has been as Director of Australia’s National Research Collections (NRCA): https://www.csiro.au/en/Showcase/NRCA.  I am currently a member of Australia’s National Committee for Data in Science (Australian National CODATA committee) and Vice-Chair of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility Executive: https://www.gbif.org/.

My main interest in development of data strategy is in the management of biodiversity datasets to improve ecological management and long-term environmental outcomes and the use of new tools and technologies for collecting and analysing biodiversity data at scale.  I am particularly interested the integration and mobilisation of new types of data from the world’s 2+ billion museum specimens (e.g. genomes, images, sounds, cultural information) and evolving frontiers in data analytics including genomics, high-throughput digitisation, machine learning and artificial intelligence as applied biological collections.   

As NRCA Director I have supported the development of a high-throughput specimen digitisation program as well as the complete refresh of collections data infrastructure.  These changes have significantly improved the digital maturity of Australia’s national collections to support the discoverability, global integration, and use of specimen data under FAIR principles (CODATA Priority 3: Data Stewardship).  The work has also seen significant progress made in advancing our capability in machine learning and AI-based analytics of specimens, in particular with regard to digital trait extraction and species identification.  This is proving valuable with regard to improving the technical capacity of Australia’s biosecurity sector (CODATA Priority 1: Making Data Work). All of these activities and programs have strong underpinning elements in terms of training technical staff, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows (CODATA Priority 4: Data Skills and Education).  I am committed to the development of the next generation of Australian scientists and for the last six years have chaired several of the national Fulbright Foundation Scholarship panels:    https://www.fulbright.org.au/.  

While undertaking these roles and activities I have continued to conduct my own research publishing 100+ peer-reviewed papers.  I have also initiated two major data-intensive national collaborative research programs.  The Biomes of Australian Soil Environments project (now part of Ausmicrobiome: https://www.australianmicrobiome.com/) has used metagenomic analysis of over 2000 sites across Australia to measure and map the continent’s soil microbiome using over 10 billion environmental DNA sequences.  The Environomics Future Science Platform (https://research.csiro.au/environomics/) has led the development in Australia of the application of scalable eDNA based approaches to environmental monitoring including the ongoing development of a National Biodiversity DNA Library.

I am passionate about the opportunities presented by emerging technologies to massively increase the richness of the global biodiversity data ecosystem and committed to taking advantage of the rapidly evolving ability to integrate and interrogate these different data streams to provide the information needed to manage the planet’s critical biological systems into the future in the face of global environmental change.