“Global Collaboration on Data beyond Disciplines”
The goal of this symposium is to build consensus on various aspects of research data management by all stakeholders in alignment with Open Research policies and initiatives. It will explore new paths for activities significant in promoting interdisciplinary and collaborative research and data reuse under different scientific disciplines based on evidence and feedback from data communities. Such global data activities are expected to be strengthened by the endeavours and facilities provided by DS, ROIS.
One of the important objectives of the current Open Science movement is the creation of new research fields and technologies based on the vast quantities of data now being produced from almost all scientific domains. Adherence to the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) Principles for data have been recognized as a norm for data-oriented activities in this Open Science era, and is leading to efforts to develop Open Data infrastructure such as enhanced and integrated metadata catalogues, persistent identifiers (PIDs; e.g., Digital Object Identifiers) and metadata standards for research data management, certification of data repositories addressing long-term management and stewardship of quality-assessed data, and so on. Moreover, in many academic facilities (e.g., universities), the use of persistent identifiers for people, places, and other entities is becoming best practice in preservation and provision of data produced by their research activities.
Further efforts are still needed to resolve the various challenges that currently exist for scientific research data; in particular, the sharing and reuse of such data. Although the importance of multidisciplinary data integration has been widely advocated, data reuse by scientists either within or across disciplines is still not easy from the point of view of the FAIR Principles: for example, there may be difficulties in discovering and accessing the data or insufficient information on the data to enable easy analysis. Often additional information is also needed to assist understanding when sharing research data with the general public, including policymakers. To improve the situation, it is important to stimulate collaborations among scientists from various disciplines and to establish systems that facilitate the interactions between the users and providers of research data.
On the basis of the above, the Joint Support-Center for Data Science Research (DS) of the Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS) and the Committee of International Collaborations on Data Science of the Science Council of Japan (SCJ) are organizing a symposium to share information on current international research data activities addressing Open Science, data-centric science, and interdisciplinary data-driven science. A key step in making science open lies in improving data quality and transparency so that researchers can easily share their work, and this necessitates a robust and global-scale infrastructure. The symposium will be a remarkable opportunity to discuss the future development of such data-oriented infrastructure in the Open Science era, and thus ensure the long-term preservation and equitable provision of quality-assessed research data. The World Data System (WDS) of the International Science Council (ISC) and its partner organization Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) are leading global initiatives that can galvanize the community to find solutions to these data-related issues, and at the same time work with the community to improve data discoverability and interoperability for effective data reuse.
