20 July, online (08:30-10:30 UTC): https://luma.com/1aa12iaw
23 July, online (16:30-18:30 UTC): https://luma.com/f30v8m09

​These are interactive, online workshops led by the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Network (RAIN), and invite civil society, academia and non-profits to affirm imagination as a collective practice.

What if AI futures were not something delivered to us, but something we could deliberate, contest, and build together? What if diverse publics could gather to imagine technological futures grounded in real societal and ecological needs, and chart practical pathways toward them?

​The workshops invite participants to affirm imagination as a collective practice. Through participatory world-building, we will move beyond abstract optimism or dystopian critique, and instead co-define actionable, justice-oriented AI futures.

​Discovery: Discover futures thinking as a critical practice that examines how imagined futures shape present decisions, power structures, and technological trajectories.

​Encounters: Through dialogue and reflection, collaboratively articulate future scenarios that feel socially, environmentally, and politically meaningful. Rather than tightly scripted facilitation, this phase encourages emergent conversation, prioritizing story-telling over theory.

​Crafting: Tell new stories and potential journeys that link the diverse futures that you imagined together.

​Workshop participants will be invited to contribute to a report with learnings from this workshop and its other three iterations.

​The workshop is run as a collaboration between the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Network (RAIN.ngo) and Our AI Collective. It is the third of a series that began at the Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FAccT) conference, and London Data Week.

The post Crafting Participatory Tech Futures Online Workshops, 20 and 23 July! appeared first on CODATA, Committee on Data of the ISC.

The

Register here!

The event is organised as part of the 5th OntoPortal Alliance Workshop, hosted by the Observatoire de Paris and coordinated by the OntoPortal-Astro team. It will bring together members of the OntoPortal Alliance, semantic technology experts, research infrastructures and data management practitioners to discuss recent developments and future directions in semantic interoperability.

About the OntoPortal Alliance

The OntoPortal Alliance is an international consortium of research and infrastructure organisations that collaboratively develop and maintain the open-source OntoPortal software. The Alliance supports a growing ecosystem of semantic artefact catalogues and ontology repositories, including initiatives such as BioPortal, AgroPortal, EarthPortal, EcoPortal, BiodivPortal and OntoPortal-Astro.

These platforms play an important role in facilitating the discovery, management and reuse of ontologies, vocabularies, terminologies and other semantic artefacts that support FAIR and interoperable research data.

Public Session Programme

The online public session will provide an overview of the OntoPortal ecosystem and its applications across research domains.

The draft programme includes:

• Introduction to OntoPortal and community Q&A (40 min)
• Panel discussion 
  • OntoPortal and research infrastructures
  • OntoPortal and data spaces
  • OntoPortal and artificial intelligence
  • OntoPortal and you
• Hands-on tutorial session

The event is open to anyone interested in semantic interoperability, ontology repositories, FAIR semantic artefacts and research data integration.

Relevance for CDIF4EOSC

The topics addressed during the workshop are highly relevant to the objectives of CDIF4EOSC, which aims to advance cross-domain interoperability within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Semantic artefacts, ontologies and metadata frameworks are essential building blocks for enabling machine-actionable interoperability across disciplines, infrastructures and data spaces. Within CDIF4EOSC, partners are exploring how these resources can support the development of more interoperable, reusable and FAIR research data ecosystems.

In particular, INRAE, a partner in the CDIF4EOSC project and a key contributor to AgroPortal, brings extensive expertise in semantic technologies, metadata management and interoperability frameworks. These activities contribute to broader efforts aimed at improving data integration and supporting collaboration across scientific domains.

The workshop therefore represents an opportunity for researchers, data stewards, infrastructure providers and interoperability experts to exchange knowledge, discover current developments and engage with a growing international community working on semantic solutions for open science.

Registration

Participation in the public session is free of charge, but registration is required.

After registration, participants will automatically receive the Zoom connection details by email.

For further information about the workshop or participation opportunities, interested individuals may contact:

Clément Jonquet (INRAE / University of Montpellier)
clement.jonquet@inrae.fr

We encourage members of the CDIF4EOSC community and stakeholders interested in semantic interoperability, FAIR data and EOSC-related developments to take part in this event.

The post OntoPortal Workshop 2026: Exploring Semantic Technologies for Interoperable and FAIR Data appeared first on CODATA, Committee on Data of the ISC.

The session on Data policies for times of crisis: Enabling open science for coordinated response will take place in Room XI and online, on Friday 17 July at 12:30-13:45 UTC / 14:30-15:45 CEST (Local Time Paris)

Register to attend the Data Policities for Times of Crisis (DPTC) online!

Register to attend in person and to attend the Global Conference https://indico.un.org/event/1021402/

Data policies for times of crisis: Enabling open science for coordinated response

As crises become increasingly complex, interconnected, and transboundary, timely access to trustworthy data is essential for effective preparedness, response, and recovery. This event presents findings from the first global UNESCO-CODATA survey on the implementation of Data Policies for Times of Crisis (DPTC) facilitated by Open Science.

Drawing on experiences from organizations across sectors and regions, the session examines how open science principles are being applied to crisis data governance, identifies implementation challenges and good practices, and explores opportunities to strengthen responsible, interoperable, and coordinated data sharing in support of sustainable development and resilience.

Background and Objectives

The growing frequency and complexity of global crises, including public health emergencies, natural hazards, climate-related events, and humanitarian crises have highlighted the critical importance of timely, reliable, and interoperable data. Effective crisis response depends on the ability of institutions to share, access, and use data across sectors and borders while ensuring ethical safeguards, accountability, security, and respect for human rights.

To support these efforts, UNESCO, in collaboration with the International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA), developed the Data Policies for Times of Crisis (DPTC) facilitated by Open Science resources, launched in 2025 as part of the UNESCO Open Science Toolkit. Grounded in the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science and aligned with internationally recognized principles such as FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics), and TRUST (Transparency, Responsibility, User focus, Sustainability, Technology), the DPTC Toolkit provides practical guidance to governments, research institutions, UN agencies, civil protection authorities, and other stakeholders seeking to strengthen crisis data governance.

The event is hosted as a thematic session of the 2026 Global Conference of the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development. It will present findings from a global UNESCO-CODATA survey conducted between March and June 2026, assessing how organizations are implementing data policies for times of crisis and applying open science principles in operational contexts. By examining current practices, implementation gaps, and emerging needs, the session will contribute to ongoing efforts to strengthen science-informed crisis preparedness and resilience worldwide.

The session has three objectives:

1. Present the findings of the first global UNESCO-CODATA survey on the implementation of data policies for times of crisis.
2. Facilitate dialogue among policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and international organizations on challenges and opportunities in crisis data governance.
3. Identify priorities for strengthening responsible, ethical, and coordinated data sharing through open science approaches in support of crisis preparedness, response, and recovery.

Agenda

Please consult the agenda linked here

Expected Outcomes

The event is expected to produce the following outcomes:

• Increased awareness of the role of open science in enabling responsible and effective data governance during times of crisis.
• Dissemination of findings from the first global UNESCO-CODATA survey, providing evidence on current practices, challenges, and opportunities related to crisis data governance.
• Enhanced dialogue among policymakers, researchers, international organizations, and practitioners on strengthening institutional preparedness through open science-enabled data policies.
• Identification of priority areas for future capacity-building, policy development, and pilot implementation activities related to the DPTC Toolkit.
• Strengthened collaboration among stakeholders working to advance ethical, interoperable, and coordinated data sharing for crisis preparedness, response, and recovery.

The post Data policies for times of crisis: Enabling open science for coordinated response, UNESCO Global IDSSD Conference appeared first on CODATA, Committee on Data of the ISC.

The recording, meeting notes, and presentations are publicly available and can be accessed from the link below:

• Webinar Recording
• Meeting Notes
• Launch of CDIF4EOSC and CDIF v.1.1 Presentation
• CDIF Profiles Presentation

If you experience any issues accessing these materials or have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@codata.org.

To join the CDIF Community List: https://bit.ly/Joint-CDIF-Community

To provide feedback on CDIF or on the webinar: cdif-feedback@codata.org

This event was conceived as the first in a series of webinars, tutorials and other events to familiarise the broad research data stewardship community in EOSC and beyond with the vision of CDIF and the mission and objectives of the CDIF4EOSC project. The event introduced the CDIF4EOSC project and covered CDIF v.1.1 at a conceptual level, suitable for policy experts, data stewards and managers of research infrastructures. Some of the more technical aspects of the CDIF profiles and recommendations were also introduced.

Specifically, the following topics were covered:

1. Introduction to CDIF4EOSC and to CDIF v1.1
2. What is a CDIF profile?
3. Overview of CDIF v1.1 profiles
4. Which CDIF profile should I use?
5. CDIF metadata production

About the CDIF4EOSC Project and CDIF

The CDIF4EOSC project, coordinated by CODATA and involving 21 partners, was launched on 1 June 2026! Shortly after we released version 1.1 of the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF), which will provide a baseline for the project work.

The distinct approach of the CDIF4EOSC project (CDIF4EOSC: Developing and implementing the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework for EOSC) is to build on the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF). The project will extend the CDIF recommendations, adding profiles and guidelines, and use case based examples, to form a comprehensive and actionable playbook for FAIR Integration in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and beyond.
Going beyond the original FAIR principles, CDIF4EOSC will develop a FAIR-by-design approach for creating FAIR digital objects. The overarching objective of the project is to enable FAIR integration by developing the CDIF4EOSC Playbook and situating this at the heart of EOSC practices, and fully integrated in the EOSC Federation.

The project will work closely with three Use Cases on oceans sciences, climate adaptation and safe-and-sustainable by design materials development, develop a suite of AI-assisted FAIRification tools and services and ensure integration with the EOSC Federation, EOSC Nodes and the Common European Data Spaces.

The suite of AI-assisted FAIRification tools and services will accelerate FAIRification at scale and have significant benefits for EOSC and the European Research Area. To maximise impact, targeted steps will be taken to implement the project outputs in EOSC Federation Nodes and Common European Data Spaces.

The post Launch of CDIF4EOSC and CDIF v.1.1: recording and presentations now available! appeared first on CODATA, Committee on Data of the ISC.

By Burçak Başbuğ, Shaily Gandhi, Matti Heikkurinen, and Slava Tykhonov.

For many people, the first associations with the word “Urban” are perhaps related to progress; skyscrapers surrounded by pristine parks, new opportunities, human connections and delightful cultural exchanges. However, this vision bringing people together also drives unplanned urban sprawl, as well as challenges that infrastructures and services struggle to cope with. Escape into population centres may also not be voluntary. For example, refugee camps often turn into permanent, growing settlements.

Independent of the drivers, concentration of population into urban centres also concentrates risks. The details may vary, but the number of individuals and the value of assets exposed to hazard events grows, while risk reduction activities and disaster response planning may face additional constraints. Unfortunately, the economic and social dynamics provide incentives to set these risks aside. The same pattern can often be observed in the approach to climate change, pandemic preparedness or maintenance of critical infrastructure. The combination of rapid urbanisation and climate change is an example of a situation where the growing, cumulative hazards may also be more than the sum of their parts.

At the same time, we have unprecedented access to data, thanks to initiatives such as Hyogo and Sendai frameworks and other mechanisms to track the impact of hazard events. We also have IT infrastructure to process these datasets efficiently and put them into context of climate and weather data.  However, we need to use these resources better: at the moment, data is often siloed, inaccessible or incompatible for efficient risk assessment and response.

Read the full blog post here

The post Urban FAIRscape at the Urban and Climate Risk Data Lab appeared first on CODATA, Committee on Data of the ISC.

An online side event to the

Monday, 6 July 2026, 07:30–08:30 CEST (05:30-06:30 UTC)

South Asia wants to build AI — but who controls the infrastructure it runs on? 

Join this event, led by CODATA Connect, to deliberate on one of the most consequential and least resolved questions in global AI governance: the gap between sovereign ambition and ground reality, and what it means for the communities most at risk.

Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/9XONUiOGTaiR7iwbv3eObw 

South Asia’s AI ambitions are clear. Across the region, governments are investing in AI

infrastructure, data platforms, and national strategies with the explicit goal of becoming builders, not just consumers, of AI. Yet a structural tension sits unaddressed at the centre of this agenda. At critical layers of the AI ecosystem, the infrastructure that powers these ambitions is operated outside domestic jurisdiction, on terms governments did not set. The question this panel asks is simple and unresolved: is South Asia building sovereign AI capacity, or deepening dependency in a more sophisticated form?

The answer looks different depending on where you stand. India has invested significantly in AI infrastructure and policy, yet structural dependencies persist. For countries with fewer resources, the gap between ambition and ground reality is wider. For indigenous and tribal communities across the region, the stakes are more immediate still. Their ecological knowledge, territorial records, and oral traditions are entering AI systems without consent, across jurisdictions where no single actor can be held accountable. Legal obligations under ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples exist. The current architecture makes them difficult to enforce.

This panel brings together academics from India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal to examine four questions: what is the current state of AI development in their countries; where dependency constrains sovereign ambition; what governance conditions must exist before community data enters AI pipelines; what the international community must do differently to support sovereignty, not just skills. 

Full concept note with information about speakers.  

The post Participation Without Power: Technology Sovereignty, Data Sovereignty and the AI Divide in South Asia appeared first on CODATA, Committee on Data of the ISC.

	Title: Universal Mandates vs. Contextual Realities: A Scoping Review of Ethical Tensions and Power Asymmetries in Global Open Science Author: Mthokozisi Masumbika Ncube, Josiline Chigwada, Patrick Ngulube URL: http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2026-021
	Title: FAIR Data in Action: The User-Centric Software Suite FAIRSave for Fully Digital, Data-Driven Studies in Materials Science Author: Malte L. Flachmann, Ilia T. Bagov, Nick T. Garabedian, Christian Greiner URL: http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2026-020

The post June 2026: Publications in the Data Science Journal appeared first on CODATA, Committee on Data of the ISC.

The

The distinct approach of the CDIF4EOSC project (CDIF4EOSC: Developing and implementing the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework for EOSC) is to build on the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF). The project will extend the CDIF recommendations, adding profiles and guidelines, and use case based examples, to form a comprehensive and actionable playbook for FAIR Integration in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and beyond.

What is CDIF? What does it seek to do? What does it recommend and why is it useful to EOSC and other Research Infrastructure initiatives? How will the CDIF4EOSC project develop it further and how can you get involved?

Register here to find out more! https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/pYUUWpukSii3TSP6mg2kNA#/registration

This event is public and open to any interested colleagues! This is conceived as the first in a series of webinars, tutorials and other events to familiarise the broad research data stewardship community in EOSC and beyond with the vision of CDIF and the mission and objectives of the CDIF4EOSC project.  The event will introduce the CDIF4EOSC project and will cover CDIF v.1.1 at a conceptual level, suitable for policy experts, data stewards and managers of research infrastructures.  Some of the more technical aspects of the CDIF profiles and recommendations will be covered: although we will happily field questions from technical experts, more detailed events for a technical audience will be organised in due course.

The webinar will cover at least the following topics:

1. Welcome to the CDIF4EOSC project!
   • • Aims and objectives
     • How to get involved, to comment and give feedback!
2. What is CDIF?
   • • Vision and background
     • What is the purpose of CDIF?
     • What does it NOT aim to do?
     • Why is it important and useful?
     • Timeline of v 1.0 and subsequent developments
3. Introduction to v 1.1
   • • Scope
     • What is a “CDIF Profile”? (Implementation Artifacts and Conformance)
     • Development and Production Process
     • Maintenance: Issues, Versioning and Repositories
4. Current CDIF 1.1 profiles
5. Roadmap: CDIF4EOSC and ongoing developments
   • • Why is this important for EOSC and other international and national RI initiatives?
6. Next Steps: feedback on v.1.1, how to get involved with CDIF and CDIF4EOSC.

The post Launch of CDIF4EOSC and CDIF v.1.1: an open, public webinar, Thursday 2 July, 15:00-17:00 CEST appeared first on CODATA, Committee on Data of the ISC.

To explore this further, join the Collaborative on Citizen Data and CODATA for the webinar “Facilitating progress of citizen data on the SDGs across regions.”

In this event, we will discuss how citizen data are supporting progress on the SDGs, from local evidence to global reporting and spotlight regional experiences from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania.

You will hear from:
• Adenike Shonowo, University of Glasgow
• Amanda Mayte Vilchez Zuñiga, Cornell University
• Carolynne Hultquist, University of Canterbury
• Kehinde Baruwa, University of Lagos
• Peter Elias, University of Lagos, Nigeria

📅 Thursday, 25 June 2026 | 8:00–9:15 AM (EDT)
🔗 Register today: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6C8Ytp0uTEmEBZKqg-DL-g#/registration

The post Facilitating progress of citizen data on the SDGs across regions appeared first on CODATA, Committee on Data of the ISC.

CODATA

Version 1.1 represents a substantial enhancement of the CDIF recommendations, with increased support for FAIR functional requirements, and a new technical approach, featuring validation tools and improved documentation. While a significant step forward, resulting from two years of implementation and further development since the initial CDIF release in May 2024, version 1.1 is also forward-looking: the CDIF4EOSC project has just started, and will drive the next major round of CDIF developments. To support this, improvements to date have been consolidated in version 1.1 and will provide a baseline for further developments led by the CDIF4EOSC project.

After the initial work in the WorldFAIR project, resulting in the release of CDIF version 1.0, the WorldFAIR+ Initiative continued testing and development of the framework. CDIF has been used in several different projects, including the OSCARS-funded CDIF4XAS project on X-ray absorption spectroscopy, implementation in the Climate-Adapt4EOSC project, the International Science Council supported project on Disaster Relief and Preparedness in Malawi, an ADA astro-materials prototype, and several others. Feedback from these projects has been incorporated in version 1.1, as have requested minor changes to some of the standards recommended for use. Version 1.1 may not be a major version change, but it represents a significant improvement in the maturity of the recommendations.

Changes in the scope and coverage of CDIF are:

• Identification of a set of Core fields, for use in all profiles
• Addition of support for binary data file such as HDF5, NetCDF, and Parquet
• Inclusion of the Manifest profile, to enable packaging of resources into FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs) using RO Crate or similar packaging technologies
• Reorganization of the Data Description profile to cover the publication of reusable data structure descriptions and variables with DDI-CDI
• Increased nuance in the description of controlled vocabularies with SKOS: Codelist and Concept Scheme profiles express the difference between lists of enumerated values used in data, and broader semantic resources

These features complement the existing capability to support FAIR access with ODRL and discovery and cataloguing using Schema.org. While significant work has been undertaken in the description of provenance information, this is not yet included in this release, nor is the upcoming revision to the Access profile. These profiles — along with several other enhancements for the description of Units of Measure, integration with Croissant for use by agentic AI, and a more-complete implementation using DCAT — are expected to be released soon. The CDIF4EOSC project will add additional support for describing data quality, context and complex variables (using (I-ADOPT), packaging (using RO-Crates), semantic mapping, and software resources.

Importantly in the CDIF 1.1 release, there is significant increase in the set of specific artefacts to support developers. CDIF Profiles now have a set of implementation tools and documentation, including:

• Detailed descriptions of each recommended metadata field
• SHACL rules for validation of JSON-LD instances
• JSON Schema for validation of JSON-LD instances
• JSON-LD Frames and Python tools for populating them
• A set of example instances
• Graphical documentation of the JSON Schema implementation

The production system for CDIF is now being transitioned to a UML Model-driven architecture, where a detailed model serves as the integrated source for all profiles, ensuring consistency across the entire set of implementation artefacts and alignment of metadata objects across different profiles and standards. All the various validation tools and documentation will be generated from this model. It is expected that the set of implementation tools will also be increased as CDIF continues to grow, with a major development effort being included in the CDIF4EOSC project.

CDIF version 1.1 establishes a strong basis for the implementation of systems to enable FAIR exchange across domain and infrastructure boundaries and paves the way for even greater future developments.

The post Release of the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF) Version 1.1 appeared first on CODATA, Committee on Data of the ISC.