The Sixth Plenary Meeting of the Research Data Alliance was held last week (23-25 September 2015) at CNAM, the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers.  This was the largest RDA plenary so far with roughly 700 participants.

A highlight for me was Barbara Ryan’s keynote and the impromptu and well-informed talk given by the French Minister of State for Digital Affaires, Axelle Lemaire.

This was a somewhat different Plenary for me than previous ones.  RDA Plenaries have a chaotic, ‘unconference’ feel, with a lot of ‘Birds of a Feather’ sessions to collect together interested parties and Interest Groups working out their activities, as well as Working Groups reporting on their progress.  It is an exciting model, with huge potential, but it also requires perseverance and patience; for people both to stand up for their ideas and to be willing to collaborate and compromise.  These are good things, of course.  Watching them evolve is fulfilling, fascinating and frustrating in equal measure, as it must be.

This year was different because I am heavily involved in three very active and productive Groups and I had to focus on these and other meetings, at the expense of engaging with BOFs and other TGs or WGs.  I’m sure the cycle will swing round again, but this was a Plenary to be more focused and productive.

The CODATA community was very actively involved and there are a number of joint Working Groups and Interest Groups.  Here are the key activities:

RDA-WDS Interest Group on Cost Recovery for Data Repositories

Along with Ingrid Dillo of DANS and the WDS Scientific Committee, and Anita de Waard of Elsevier Research, I am one of the co-chairs of this co-branded RDA-WDS Interest Group.  The focus of the activity is to analyse current income streams for data repositories, to understand how they are changing and what new sources of income may be available if the repository needs to evolve its business model to ensure sustainability.  In depth interviews were conducted with some 25 data repositories and the findings of those interviews have now been written up into a draft report.

In a shared session with the RDA Interest Group on Domain Repositories, we presented the key findings of the report which include a landscape analysis of the types of income streams and a typology of the overall business models encountered.  Participants of the session then conducted a SWOT analysis of these business models.  The results of this will be published soon.

• Draft Report on Income Streams for Data Repositories
• Presentation for the Income Streams Session
• RDA P6 Session Page

CODATA-RDA Interest Group on Legal Interoperability

As Mark Parsons said in his introductory talk, the CODATA-RDA Interest Group has been cranking out the work!  At the Fifth Plenary in San Diego, we presented a definition and a set of high level ‘Legal Interoperability Principles for Research Data’.  Legal interoperability is an attribute which is important for the reuse of research data.

Legal interoperability occurs among multiple datasets when:

• use conditions are clearly and readily determinable for each of the datasets,
• the legal use conditions imposed on each dataset allow creation and use of combined or derivative products, and
• users may legally access and use each dataset without seeking authorization from data rights holders on a case-by-case basis, assuming that the accumulated conditions of use for each and all of the datasets are met.

The principles identify the primary issues to be addressed to achieve such legal interoperability.  Over the last six months, the group has been developing a set of practical implementation guidelines for these principles.  The crank has been turned by many hands through a regular series of online calls.  The session discussed the draft document and laid out our schedule to deliver a completed set of Implementation Guidelines for the Principles on the Legal Interoperability of Research Data

• Implementation Guidelines for the Principles on the Legal Interoperability of Research Data
• Legal Interoperability Principles for Research Data
• RDA P6 Session Page

CODATA-RDA Working Group on Data Science Summer Schools

This activity starts from the premise that contemporary research – particularly when addressing the most significant, transdisciplinary research challenges – cannot be done effectively without a range of skills relating to data. This includes the principles and practice of Open Science and research data management and curation, the use of a range of data platforms and infrastructures, large scale analysis, statistics, visualisation and modelling techniques, software development and annotation and more. We define ‘Research Data Science’ as the ensemble of these skills.

The CODATA-RDA Working Group on Data Science Summer Schools aims to address this recognised need for a means to develop additional skills through a scalable and consistent series of short courses or ‘Summer Schools’.  The model builds on existing CODATA activities, and brings together partners and with expertise and reusable materials to create a coherent whole that is more than the sum of its parts.  The partners include Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry and the Digital Curation Centre.

The first introductory Research Data Science Summer School will be hosted by the International Centre of Theoretical Physics, in Trieste, Italy, 1-12 August 2016.  The ICTP is generously providing accommodation and board for up to 120 participants.  Travel funding for 30-40 students has been secured from ICTP, TWAS and CODATA and discussions are ongoing with other sponsors and funders.

The session discussed the approach and included a call for further collaborators and funding.

• Application Page for the CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science, hosted at ICTP (applications open from 19 October 2015, deadline 18 April 2015)
• Further Information about the CODATA-RDA Research Data Science Summer Schools
• RDA P6 Session Page

In addition to these three Groups, with which I am directly involved as co-chair or facilitator, there were three other activities with connections to CODATA Task Groups.

CODATA DAR TG-RDA Data Rescue IG

The CODATA DAR TG-RDA Data Rescue IG held a joint session, entitled ‘The Data Corridor: You, The Past, and The Future’.

From the session description:

The RDA/CODATA Data Rescue Group plans to publish a book on “Data Rescue”.  It will set the scene, describe and expand the rationale, define the benchmarks, and present selected Case Studies.  Which Case Studies to include can be a topic for open discussion at this session.  An added intention is that a (possibly annual) Newsletter (online) will be issued to update the Case Studies and report new ones.

The RDA/CODATA Data Rescue Group has also been charged with presenting “Guidelines” for rescuing data.  Activities involved in the recovery, digitizing, preserving of originals, plus the dissemination and archiving of the digitial versions, all need to be included in those Guidelines.  The Group will hold a Workshop on Data Rescue in Boulder in the Fall of 2016, where topics for the Guidelines will also be addressed.  However, the Workshop will probably appeal more to data producers while the RDA community tends to include more data managers.  This session will therefore seek input from aspects of data management regarding contributions to those Guidelines.

• RDA P6 Session Page
• CODATA Data at Risk Task Group

CODATA TG on Science and the Management of Physical Objects in the Digital Era

The CODATA TG on Science and the Management of Physical Objects in the Digital Era held a ‘Birds of a Feather Session’ on ‘Persistently Linking Physical Samples with Data and Publications: A Matter of Reproducible Research’ with a view to establishing an RDA Interest Group.  The objectives of the BOF were:

1. To identify as many systems, both domain specific and cross domain, that are being developed to manage physical objects and data and publications derived from them.
2. To facilitate international cooperation to develop harmonized approaches and best practices for physical object identification and digital curation.
3. To build linkages between object repositories and museums, digital data repositories, scientific publications, and science communities.
4. To enable the facilitation of object and sample identification infrastructure both at the national and international levels.

• RDA P6 Session Page
• CODATA Task Group on Science and the Management of Physical Objects in the Digital Era

CODATA-RDA Interest Group on Materials Data, Infrastructure & Interoperability

Last but not least, the CODATA-RDA Materials Data, Infrastructure and Interoperability Interest Group, held a session to establish a Working Group on the International Materials Resource Registry (IMMR).

• RDA P6 Session Page

This post is provided by Xaiogang (Marshall) Ma, a core member of the CODATA Early Career Data Professionals Group (ECDP). He was the winner of one of the inaugural World Data System Stewardship Awards at SciDataCon 2014. Marshall is an Associate Research Scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, specialising in Semantic eScience and Data Science. Check out his RPI Homepage here.

An information email in early September from Simon Hodson, the CODATA Executive Director, attracted my deep interest. His email was about the high-level political launch for the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. I was interested because I have worked on Open Data in the past few years and the experience shows that Open Data is far more than a purely technical issue. I was excited to see that there would be such an event initiated by political partners and focusing on social impacts. I am grateful for the support from the CODATA Early Career Data Professionals Working Group, which made it possible for me to head to New York City to attend the forum in person on September 28th.

The forum was held in the Jade Room of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, and lasted for three hours from 2 to 5PM, with a tight but well-organized schedule of about 10 lightning talks, four panels and about 30 commitment introductions from the partners. The panels and lightning talks focused on why open data is needed, how to make data open and, especially, what and the value of Open Data for The 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development and the social impact that the data can generate. I was happy to see that successful stories of Open geospatial data were mentioned several times in the lightening talks and the panels. For example, delegates from the World Resources Institute presented the Global Forest Watch-Fires, which provides near-real time information from various resources that can enable people to take prompt response before the fire runs out of control. During the partner introductions, I heard more exciting news about the actions that the stakeholders in governments, academia, industry and non-profit organizations are going to take to support the joint efforts of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. For example, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation will invest $20m to improve data on coverage of nutrition interventions and other key indicators by 2020 in several countries; the DigitalGlobe commits to provide three countries with evaluation licenses to their BaseMap service as well as training sessions for human resources; the Planet Labs commits $60 million in geospatial imagery to support the global community; and the William and flora Hewlett Foundation is proposing to commit about $3m to the start-up support of the secretariat for a Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. A list of the current partners is accessible on the partnership’s website here.

The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data has a long-term vision for 2030: a world in which everyone is able to engage in solving the world’s greatest problems by (1) Effectively Using Data and (2) Fostering Trust and Accountability in the Sharing of Data. The pioneering partners in this effort have already committed to deliver more than 100 data driven projects worldwide to pave the pathway for the vision for 2030. For the first year, the partnership will work together to achieve these goals: (1) Improve the Effective Use of Data, (2) Fill Key Data Gaps, (3) Expand Data Literacy and Capacity, (4) Increase Openness and leverage of Existing Data, and (5) Mobilize Political Will and Resources.

The forum was chaired by Prof. Sanjeev Khagram, with over 200 attendees from various backgrounds. The diversity of the attendees was partly reflected in the result of an online poll during the forum, which asked the participant to choose which goal that better data will make the most difference (see the result in the photo below).

During the reception time after the forum, I had a brief chat with Prof. Khagram about CODATA and also the Early Career Data Professionals Working Group, as well as the potential collaborations. He informed me that the partnership is open and invites broad participation to address the sustainable development goals. Prof. Khagram also mentioned that a bigger event, the World Data Forum, will take place in 2016. I also had the opportunity to catch up with Dr. Bob Chen from CIESIN, Columbia University about recent activities. It seems that ‘climate change’ is the topic of focus for several conferences in the year 2015, such as the International Scientific Conference, the Research Data Alliance Sixth Plenary Meeting and the United Nations Climate Change Conference, and Paris is the city for all these three events.

The report A World That Counts: Mobilising The Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, prepared by the United Nation Secretary-General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, provides more background information about the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.

This post is provided from CODATA China Secretariat: Dr.Li Jianhui, Ms. Zhang Hui and Ms. Li Chang.

The Second Scientific Data Conference, sponsored by the Chinese National Committee for CODATA (CODATA-China), was held in Lanzhou, China on 26-27 August, 2015. More than 450 experts, scholars and students from over 100 research units participated in this conference.

Under the national strategy of Internet Plus and One Belt and One Road in the big data era, this conference aimed to discuss scientific data sharing and its basic theory, method, technology, management and application to diverse fields including environment resources, ecology, information consumption, space-based astronomy, medicine and health.The conference also aimed to explore, develop and promote an innovative scientific activity model driven by scientific big data, to serve the construction of greater scientific collaboration in the Silk Road economic belt.

Spread over two days, the conference comprised two plenary sessions and ten breakout sessions. In addition to three invited reports, the conference featured five keynotes from: Academician Guo Huadong, Academician XU Zongben, Academician Ge Changchun, Prof. Kwan-Liu Ma, Prof. LI Wenqin. The keynotes focused on the scientific problems and challenges of scientific big data, the role of scientific big data in the Silk Road economic belt, and data visualization.

Scholars reached broad consensus through extensive discussion and hold the view that scientific research has entered the big data era. The basic theory, method and key technology of scientific data collection, management, analysis, processing, sharing, mining, calculation and application need to be established as soon as possible, in order to fuel technological innovation, industry transformation and social development.

A specially convened workshop organised in collaboration with the CODATA Task Group on Data Citation surveyed current practice of data citation in China and among stakeholders including publishers and data centres. Attendees heard calls to promote the achievements of Chinese scientists, data curators and data managers through the means of data publishing and by incorporating the practice of data citation and research communication. It was announced also that the greater communication of Chinese scientific data in this way was supported by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of PRC.

In his concluding speech, as part of the closing ceremony, Prof. LI Jianhui, Secretary-General of CODATA-China, announced that the Third Scientific Data Conference will be held in Shanghai in September 2016.

This post comes from John Rumble, chair of the CODATA Working Group on the Description of Nanomaterials, and Egon Willighagen, of Maastricht University and the eNanoMapper Project.

The CODATA Working Group (WG) on Nanomaterials held a small workshop with members of the eNanoMapper (http://www.enanomapper.net/)  team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, on 13-14 July, 2015. The purpose of the meeting was to clarify and compare approaches to the description of nanomaterials, specifically the  CODATA WG’s Uniform Description System for Materials on the Nanoscale  (UDS) (http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20688) and the eNanoMapper Ontology, as  described in Journal of Biomedical Semantics (2015) (http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13326-015-0005-5).

At the workshop, all major UDS information categories, subcategories, and descriptors were reviewed in detailed and compared to the eNanoMapper ontology. Several issues were identified as requiring revision, including better description of measurement methods used to characterize aspects such as size, shape, and size distribution, the role of topology, and differentiating among different types of nanomaterial stability. The results of this workshop will be combined with recommendations made at a similar workshop held at the Universities at Shady Grove in the United States on10-11 June 2015, to guide revision of version 1.0 of the UDS. The next version should be available in early September and will include downloadable tables and sources of definitions, when applicable.

Immediately following the Maastricht workshop, CODATA WG representatives met at the Quality Nano Conference held in Crete. Of particular interest was the description of coatings and coronas for individual nano-objects, especially with respect to their reproducibility (or randomness) and predictability.

For further information about the CODATA Nanomaterials WG, please contact John Rumble at rumble@udsnano.org. For further information about eNanoMapper, please contact Egon Willighagen at egon.willighagen@gmail.com.

This post is by Elizabeth Griffin, chair of the CODATA Data at Risk Task Group, and co-chair of the related RDA Interest Group on Data Rescue.

An international conference on Our Common Future under Climate Change in Paris? A remarkable choice of venue as it turned out: climate change was pronounced, the temperature swinging from 39ºC to 21ºC faster than you could keep track, while the freshness and friskiness of the wind suggested autumn in early July. Longer-term aspects of the changes, those insidious underlying trends that we only perceive by reference to accurate past data, demanded the busy attention of some 2000 delegates from all over, their specialities and contributions disaggregated into some 165 parallel sessions classified according to their bearings on data, interpretations, or solutions.

Gems were admixed with frustrations. The jewelry to be gained by connecting disparate strands was tarnished by their division into so many parallel sessions that some deserving nuggets had to glister unseen, limiting the effectiveness of each message. The delegates had messages enough – the list of session titles and contents were ample witness to that – but giving each space by subdividing the sessions where no division was obvious or suitable did not serve the speakers well. Neither did dividing the conference physically between three locations that took 15-20 minutes of healthy street walking or less-healthy metro riding – presumably inevitable for reasons of available space, but not ideal from the aspect of the conference. Any venture outside was as good as a continent away, and must have deterred many.

What did we hear that was novel, unexpected, heart-warming or frightening? Plenty in all categories. The evidence of climate change, particularly in the polar regions, is incontestable to any but the deliberately blind, though interpretations are too model-dependent to represent the cast-iron situation that politicians seem to need. Heart-warming were the intimate projects, evidenced in numerous posters, describing heroic local efforts to challenge what the world now threatens them with. Even gender seemed to play a convincing role in countries like Bangladesh, where women have little control over the deployment of resources.

But the many theoretical solutions for “reducing carbon emissions” through science-based policies and managed economies were neither novel nor unexpected, and none tackled adequately the fundamental question: Who or what can be defined as responsible for actually driving AND SUSTAINING climate change? If the correct answer is (as I interjected) Everyone, then that is where solutions must begin. But why did the solution thus stated appear so radical that it merited recording for use in students’ summer school on climate change? Are the emperor’s new clothes really so hard to see?

How can that message get to where it is certainly needed but still blithely ignored? Some hypocrisy was on evidence at the conference: lunch came in modular plastic cups destined for a landfill, and the registration fee included items we neither needed nor wanted. Is the future something that “civilized” humanity would rather give into than face? Is all this just a theoretical exercise, always someone else’s problem?

Time is running out. Tipping-point is approaching. Tomorrow is nearly here. But there is hope – the psychology of Community can break the vicious circle when moral issues are introduced into the solution, such as in Transition Towns like Totnes (UK) and mini-eco communes (e.g., in Cornwall, UK). The nuggets of excellence and example created by local communities will become the jewels of our own future provided that (a) we manage them effectively, and (b) we start acting now.

This post comes from David Newell, Chair of the CODATA Task Group on Fundamental Physical Constants.  See also:

• CODATA Recommended Values of the Fundamental Physical Constants: 2014: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22826
• CODATA Recommended Values of the Fundamental Physical Constants: 2014 – Summary: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22827

The compilation of the 2014 self-consistent set of values of the basic constants and conversion factors of physics and chemistry recommended by the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) for international use has recently been completed by its Task Group on Fundamental Constants (TGFC). The new values are available from ArXiv arXiv:1507.07956v1, from the CODATA Zenodo Collection http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22826 and from the NIST website on ‘Constants’ Units and Uncertainty’ physics.nist.gov/constants.  They are based on a multi-variant least-squares adjustment that takes into account all data available through 31 December 2014.

As a working principle, the validity of the physical theory underlying the adjustment is assumed. This includes special relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics (QED), the standard model of particle physics, including CPT invariance, and the exactness of the relationships between the Josephson and von Klitzing constants K_J and R_K and the Planck constant h and elementary charge e. Although the possible time variation of the constants continues to be an active field of both experimental and theoretical research, to date there has been no confirmed observation of a variation relevant to the data on which the 2014 recommended values are based.

2014 Values: Reduction in Uncertainty

A significant number of new results became available for consideration, both experimental and theoretical, from 1 January 2010, after the closing date of the 2010 adjustment, through 31 December 2014, the closing date of the 2014 adjustment. Overall, the recommended values fundamental constants have become more accurate, i.e., their uncertainties have decreased, due to improved measurements and theoretical calculations of the measurable quantities that depend on the constants. For example, compared to the CODATA 2010 recommended values,

• The 2014 value of the relative mass of the electron A_r(e) has a relative uncertainty of 2.9 × 10^‑11, a reduction in uncertainty by a factor of 14.

• The 2014 value of the fine-structure constant a has a relative uncertainty of 2.3 × 10^‑10, a reduction by a factor of 1.4.

• The 2014 value of the Newtonian constant of gravitation G has a relative uncertainty of 4.7 × 10^‑5, a reduction by a factor of 4.7.

• The 2014 value of the Planck constant h has a relative uncertainty of 1.2 × 10^‑8, a reduction by a factor of 3.7.

• The 2014 value of the Boltzmann constant k has a relative uncertainty of 5.7 × 10^‑7, a reduction by a factor of 1.6.

Challenges with Input Data for the Proton RMS Electric Charge Radius r_p

As is the case with all CODATA adjustments of the fundamental physical constants, a major challenge is the treatment of discrepant input data. For the 2014 adjustment the input data for the proton root-mean-square (rms) electric charge radius r_p remained a puzzle. The value of r_p from muonic hydrogen experiments has a smaller uncertainty by more than a factor of 10 than that from a combined value of r_p from electron-proton scattering data and hydrogen (H) and deuterium (D) spectroscopy, yet differs by over a factor of five times the uncertainty of their difference, or “5σ”. To address this discrepancy, the TGFC invited the principle investigators and experts involved with the experiments and theory related to muonic hydrogen, electron-proton scattering, and H and D spectroscopy to its 2014 meeting held 3-4 November 2014 at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM). Based on the advice of these experts, it was decided not to include the muonic hydrogen results in the 2014 adjustment (see details and minutes of the November 2014 meeting). To help address other input-data issues, CODATA co-organized a workshop 1-6 February 2015 in Eltville, Germany where various issues with the analysis of the electron-proton scattering data as well as with some of the acoustic gas thermometry data were resolved (see https://indico.gsi.de/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=2742).

2018 CODATA Recommended Values and the New SI

CODATA is presently preparing for its major role in a significant revision of the International System of Units (SI) scheduled for adoption in the fourth quarter of 2018. This “New SI” will be based on exact numerical values for h, e , the Boltzmann constant k, and the Avogadro constant N_A (for more information, see: http://www.bipm.org/en/measurement-units/new-si/).   In 2011 at its 24th meeting the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) invited CODATA to continue to provide least-squares adjusted, recommended values of the fundamental constants, h, e, k, and N_A in particular, since these values will be those used for the revised SI. Because of the good progress made in both experiment and theory since the 31 December 2010 closing date of the 2010 CODATA adjustment, the uncertainties of the 2014 recommended values of h, e, k and N_A are already at the level required for the adoption of the revised SI by the 26th CGPM in the fall of 2018. The formal road map to redefinition includes a special CODATA adjustment of the fundamental constants with a closing date for new data of 1 July 2017 in order to determine the exact numerical values of h, e, k, and N_A that will be used to define the New SI. A second CODATA adjustment with a closing date of 1 July 2018 will be carried out so that a complete set of recommended values consistent with the New SI will be available when it is formally adopted by the 26th CGPM. Ordinarily the closing date for the regularly scheduled CODATA adjustment carried out every four years―in this case the 2018 CODATA adjustment―would have been 31 December 2018. However, the normal date has been advanced by six months so that the 2018 set of CODATA recommended values will not only be consistent with the New SI, but ready for all to use at the exact same time the New SI becomes a reality.

This post is by Mark Thorley, a member of the CODATA Executive Committee and Chair of the CODATA Data Policy Committee.

It is an honour and a privilege to be invited to become a member of the International Council for Science’s Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the Conduct of Science (CFRS).

The CFRS serves as the guardian of the ICSU Principle of the Universality of Science and undertakes a variety of actions to defend scientific freedoms and to promote integrity and responsibility in the conduct of science. The universality of science in its broadest sense is about developing a truly global scientific community on the basis of equity and non-discrimination. It is also about ensuring that science is trusted and valued by societies across the world. As such, it incorporates issues related to the conduct of science; capacity building; science education and literacy; the relationship between science and society; and crucially, equitable access to data and information and other resources for research.

My contribution to the work of the CFRS will be built on my broad experience and expertise in open access, research data management and related policy development and implementation. Key to this is my understanding of the landscape of open access and research data, from the technical through to the strategic, and the resulting implications for researchers and research organisations.

The provision of open access to scientific results is an important part of the responsibility of science in the modern age, as both a hedge against scientific fraud and for developing science as a public good. Open research data are both a pre-requisite of supporting open and transparent research, and also an opportunity for new areas of research and innovation. I am keen that through the work of the CFRS and CODATA we can develop robust and pragmatic guidance for the research community on how to ensure that research data are wherever possible made openly available for use by others in a manner consistent with relevant legal, ethical and regulatory frameworks and norms.

I have been working in research data management since 1990 and in open access policy development and implementation since 2006, and am currently Head of Science Information for the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council. I am one of the Research Council UK policy leads in Open Access and scholarly communications, where I have been prominent in the development and implementation of RCUK’s Open Access policy. I am a member of the advisory board for the Nature Publishing Group journal ‘Scientific Data’, and was one of the experts who contributed to the recent ICSU statement on Open Access to scientific data and literature and the assessment of research by metrics. I also helped develop the OECD’s Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding.

I am also a member of the Executive Committee of CODATA, and I see this appointment very much as recognition of the work that myself and colleagues within CODATA have done to develop the agenda of open research data.

My appointment to the CFRS is for three years from this October.

More information about the work for the CFRS is available from the ICSU website (http://www.icsu.org/freedom-responsibility/cfrs).

This post is by Alena Rybkina, a member of the CODATA Executive Committee, of the CODATA Early Career Data Professionals Group, and a participant in the Task Group on Earth and Space Science Data Interoperability.

The ‘Task Group on Earth and Space Science Data Interoperability’ (TG-ESSDI) published an electronic version of the first edition of the Atlas of the Earth’s Magnetic Field in 2013. It includes a unified set of physical, geographic, thematic, and historical materials for a detailed study of the geomagnetic field from 1500 to 2010. The Atlas is intended for a wide range of scientists, teachers, students and experts in applied areas relating to the geosciences, including geologists and geophysicists studying geomagnetism. The Atlas is a unique cartographic product that contains comprehensive and scientifically grounded characteristics of geomagnetic phenomenon, and contains the results of historical and modern studies of the Earth’s magnetic field.

In May 2015, with support from CODATA and hosted by ICSU, TG-ESSDI organised an international workshop on ‘The Atlas of the Earth’s Magnetic Field. Second Edition’. The meeting was designed as a launch event for the project to create the second edition of The Atlas, with the aim of significantly extending the content of The Atlas. The list of participants included specialists in the geomagnetic studies with representatives from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, the Commission for the Geological Map of the World (CGMW), the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA), and the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) etc.

The workshop resulted in a document that is expected to become the base for the content of the Second Edition. It was agreed to include following new or extended chapters:

• Current knowledge of the magnetic field. Main field. From ~8000 to 2020.
• SWARM data (satellite was launched by ESA in November 2013)
• Regional scale maps (including Arctic and Antarctic maps)
• Magnetic fields of the Solar System: Sun, Mars and other planets
• Applications of the magnetic field data (drilling, navigation, GPS, dykes etc)

A further meeting organised to coincide with the 26th General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), which was held from 22 June to 2 July 2015 in Prague, Czech Republic. The conference was characterised by the central theme: ‘Earth and Environmental Sciences for Future Generations’.  A presentation about the Second Edition of the Atlas was given by Alena Rybkina and feedback was received through subsequent discussions and working meetings organised by TG-ESSDI. As a result of these discussions, it was decided, for example, to extend the historical chapter of the Atlas and include historical charts from Spain, from the magnetic observatory of Barcelona, as well as from South Africa, Czech Republic and other locations. Thus the Second Edition of the Atlas will extend its geographic reach and become an even more important and valuable project for the magnetic field and earth data community.

This post is by Elizabeth Griffin, chair of the CODATA Data at Risk Task Group, and – as she explains below – now co-chair of the related RDA Interest Group on Data Rescue.

The CODATA Data at Risk Task Group (DAR-TG) has suddenly got much larger! It has now become affiliated to the Research Data Alliance, through the formation of an RDA Interest Group for “Data Rescue”.

The combined group (known as IG-DAR-TG) shares all the same scientific principles, the same objectives (and even the same ‘language’) as its natal CODATA Task Group for “Data At Risk”; the two Groups will maintain their own identities within the merged affiliated one, but share the benefits of the two supporting organisations.

The topic of “Data Rescue” is becoming recognized as vitally important to researchers, particularly in matters of climate change and global warming. Just about every scientific study can benefit substantially from being able to access to its heritage data at some point, for some purpose.

Data Rescue involves two strands of data management:

1. the recovery and digitization of analogue data – those too historic to have been born-digital – and;
2. adding essential value to archives of (mostly early) electronic ones – metadata, format information, access.

Accounts of the successful recovery and upgrading or digitization of holder data brim over with the unique scientific benefits, which then improve the sort of modelling that is critical for predicting future conditions. It’s a win-win situation, so why are “Data Rescue” initiatives even necessary?  This is:

1. because the challenges of extracting data and information from outmoded, analogue technology can be considerable;
2. because this process generally requires important information about the platform and mode of gathering data that can be very hard to reconstruct; and,
3. because such initiatives also need to counter a general disbelief that they even exist or could ever be scientifically useful. It is important to counter the widespread assumption that all data of value are born-digital.

We hope and plan that that new Data Rescue initiative will waken up the world to the huge potential waiting to be recovered! Please join us, either through the CODATA Task Group “Data At Risk” or the RDA branch “Data Rescue”.

This post is by Elizabeth Griffin, chair of the CODATA Data at Risk Task Group.

Every two years, climate scientists at Elsevier (New York) and IEDA (Integrated Earth Data Applications, Columbia University), jointly support and award the International Data Rescue Award in the Geosciences for the best project that describes the ‘rescue’ of heritage data in the context of the geosciences. The result of the competition for 2014-15 was announced at the annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), held in April in Vienna. The strength and scope of the competition had increased significantly since the 2013 one.

A shortlist of four was announced in Vienna: with three receiving ‘honourable mention’.  The winner of the 2015 International Data Rescue Award in the Geosciences was British Macrofossils Online, a Jisc-funded project from the British Geological Survey to create a fully electronic catalogue of all the fossil collections in UK museums and similar repositories. The project team consisted of Mike Howe, Caroline Buttler, Dan Pemberton, Eliza Howlett, Tim McCormick, Simon Harris and Michela Contessi working alongside a number of other contributors.

During the same ceremony, a Special Issue of an online journal, GeoResJ, was launched: it was given over entirely to descriptions of data rescue projects, and featured a six-page introductory article by the CODATA “Data At Risk” Task Group (DAR-TG) team, entitled ‘When are Old Data New Data?’.

Opening the meeting in Vienna, Dr Elizabeth Griffin (Chair, DAR-TG) explained and illustrated the considerable scientific importance of recovering scientific information that was recorded before the electronic age, and what CODATA (through its TG) was attempting to do towards stimulating many more data recovery efforts. The visibility which the evening afforded to the DAR-TG and to CODATA itself was very valuable, the event presenting a memorable complement of rationale, endeavour and achievement. Open publicity of this nature is one of the goals of the DAR-TG; it is essential for spreading the word about undertaking and (then) coordinating efforts to bring archived, nearly lost, or almost unreadable data back into full service.