The virtual CODATA General Assembly was held on 15th December 2020 with more than a hundred experts worldwide involved. Highlights 2020, CODATA vision, and work plan 2021 are among the talk lists.
CODATA VISION (Barend Mons, 2020)
According to Dr. Simon Hodson, the Global Open Science Cloud (GOSC) Initiative has been taken as one of the current pilot activities in CODATA. This GOSC Initiative is a CAS-funded project for international cooperation, that will start from 2021 to 2025. It is also the first project engaged in the CODATA Decadal program so far.
Prof. Li Jianhui also pointed out that, this GOSC Initiative can provide seed funding for the initialization of the Global Open Science Cloud. A more detailed action plan for international engagement shall be followed next year. And open collaboration is urgently called for among worldwide research e-infrastructures driven by open science. He also suggested establishing an international project office to strengthen the connection between different countries, regions, and institutions for capacity building in the long run.
Besides, Prof. Barend Mons re-emphasized the importance of applying the bottom-up approach, especially the NGO mode to help guarantee the interoperability between e-infrastructures, which is supposed to an important commitment in the GOSC Initiative. Existing partnerships, such as the “Data Together”, as well as the others, should be combined as a light-weight solution to strengthen the overall influence of both the GOSC Initiative and other open science activities.
The idea of GOSC was proposed during the CODATA Beijing Conference 2019 followed by a series of discussions, such as the GOSC workshop 2020, the panel & parallel session during the International FAIR Convergence meeting 2020, as well as the forthcoming GOSC symposium next September in Beijing. Currently, a CODATA GOSC working group has been established this October with ten global experts initializing the work for the co-design of GOSC policy and sketched work plan. The monthly call has been set up to help bridge the gap for the further enrichment of this topic.
Another kick-off meeting was held recently by the Chinese GOSC Advisory Board. Suggestions include further research following the UNESCO open science recommendation; exploration of better ways to foster cooperation and alignment under the GOSC framework; disciplinary demonstration to tackle scientific and societal challenges across regions and disciplines.
Introduction to Virtual General Assembly December 2020
