3 September 2026

The formal vote on the WDS governance and membership changes opens next week, marking an important milestone in WDS’s commitment to transparent, participatory decision-making. These changes bring together the recommended governance updates, membership structure changes, and the rationale for the proposed approach, reflecting extensive work by WDS project teams and incorporating member questions and feedback gathered during the consultation process. 

We encourage all WDS members to: 

If you have questions or suggestions, please contact us at wds-ipo@utk.edu. Your engagement ensures that WDS remains a robust and responsive community serving trusted digital data repositories worldwide. 

To support members ahead of the vote, WDS has scheduled two open office hour sessions on 16 September 2026 where you can ask questions and get clarity on the proposed governance and membership changes, the voting timeline, and how the process will work. We encourage all members to join one of these sessions to ensure you feel informed, confident, and ready to participate. 

Thank you for making your voice count! 

The World Data System is proud to recognize Dr. Maggie Levenstein, a member of the WDS Scientific Committee, for her outstanding leadership in the global data community. After a decade as Director of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, a WDS regular member, Dr. Levenstein has announced she will be stepping back from this role to return to a faculty position at the University of Michigan. 

Throughout her tenure, Dr. Levenstein described leading ICPSR as “the honor of my life,” emphasizing her dedication to advancing data stewardship, building sustainable research infrastructures, and mentoring future leaders in data science. Her influence continues through her service with WDS, where her expertise strengthens our mission to promote excellence in research data management worldwide. 

The World Data System is excited to announce that Katherine Read, after four years as Administrative Assistant, is stepping into the role of Information Specialist at WDS. Katherine has been instrumental in supporting WDS operations and advancing our mission to promote trusted data repositories and global collaboration. Her commitment, organizational skills, and attention to detail have strengthened the work of the WDS team and the international research community we serve.  

In her new role, Katherine will help advance WDS’s core objectives as seen in the 2025–2027 Action Plan, supporting the development and implementation of best practices in data management for scientific data repositories and strengthening engagement and advocacy across the global WDS membership. 

CODATA, RDA, and WDS invite proposals to host International Data Week 2029, a four-day event bringing together leaders in research data and open science. Successful host proposals must demonstrate strong local partnerships, venue/platform readiness, and robust financial support. WDS welcomes you to reach out as needed to wds-ipo@utk.edu. 

Application Deadline: 2 November 2026 

International Data Week (IDW) 2027 will take place in Cape Town, South Africa, from 20-23 September 2027. Mark your calendars and plan to join us for this fantastic conference that brings together data professionals, researchers, policymakers, and innovators from around the world. Stay tuned for more details on the program and registration. 

The DataStream Initiative is a collaborative effort dedicated to safeguarding Canada’s freshwater resources. By providing a free and open data platform, DataStream enables access to and sharing access of water quality data across sectors, jurisdictions, and watersheds. The platform empowers community science by making local data visible and usable at all decision-making levels, fostering knowledge exchange and best practices in water data management. Through its work, DataStream has significantly expanded public access to water data throughout Canada, supporting informed action to protect the country’s vital freshwater ecosystems. 

DataStream’s mission aligns seamlessly with WDS's core values, particularly in promoting open data access, cross-sector collaboration, and high standards for data stewardship. As part of the WDS network, DataStream embodies principles such as transparency, accessibility, and community engagement, advancing global efforts to ensure scientific data serves both policy and public good. By making water quality data widely available and usable, DataStream strengthens the WDS’s vision of reliable, interoperable data infrastructure that drives better decision-making for sustainability and resource protection not only in Canada but as a model for other regions worldwide. The DataStream Initiative became a regular member of the World Data System in June 2026. 

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a WDS regular member since 2019, empowers the scientific community with state-of-the-art resources, such as high-performance supercomputers, advanced tools for airborne and field observations, and sophisticated computer models enhanced with artificial intelligence. Its staff brings together expertise from a wide range of disciplines, fostering cross-laboratory collaboration that enables creative solutions to some of today’s most complex scientific challenges. In addition to research, NCAR is deeply committed to education and outreach, offering workforce training for early-career scientists, public lectures, and scientific workshops.  

This collaborative and multidisciplinary approach makes NCAR an ideal partner within WDS. Both organizations share a commitment to advancing open access to high-quality scientific data and fostering global collaboration. NCAR’s extensive infrastructure, expert community, and dedication to capacity building directly support the WDS’s mission of promoting trusted data stewardship and enabling international research networks. By providing reliable data services and engaging in education across disciplines and borders, NCAR strengthens the WDS network, helping ensure that critical atmospheric and Earth system data are accessible for research, policy-making, and societal benefit around the world.  

Professor Elisha Chiware has been awarded the Leadership Achievement Award by the Technological Higher Education Network South Africa (THENSA), recognizing a distinguished career of service and impact. During his tenure as Director of Libraries at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), Prof. Chiware helped drive strategic progress in research support and digital infrastructure, strengthening the foundations needed for long-term, high-quality data stewardship. 

A hallmark of this work was Prof. Chiware’s leadership in developing CPUT’s Research Data Infrastructure, which contributed to eSango being recognized as a CoreTrustSeal-certified Trusted Data Repository and CPUT becoming a member of the World Data System. This achievement reflects a sustained commitment to internationally recognized good practices in repository trustworthiness and data management. While he is retiring from his role at CPUT, he plans on transitioning into professional consulting to continue supporting organizations across the Southern African Development Community region. WDS congratulates Prof. Chiware on this milestone and thanks him for fostering stronger engagement between CPUT and the global data community.

The in-person conference will take place in Leiden, the Netherlands, from 27–29 October 2026 at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center and the LUMC Research Building. All plenary sessions will also be live-streamed for those unable to attend in person. Information about the online option will be released soon.  

PIDfest is the global meeting place for everyone who cares about keeping knowledge connected–across people, systems, disciplines, borders, and time. Whether you are fairly new to persistent identifiers (PIDs), embedding them in practice, or shaping national and global infrastructure, PIDfest offers a space to learn, connect, and help strengthen the foundations of open science. 

The full program is now available on the PIDfest website.  

Early bird registration for the Research Data Alliance (RDA)'s 27th Plenary Meeting (P27) has ended, but you can still attend! The event will be held in London, United Kingdom, as an in-person event, 6-8 October 2026. P27, hosted by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will have the theme “Shaping a Global Open Research Commons.” 

 A selection of co-located events happening before and after the plenary include:

To strengthen coordination across the rapidly growing ecosystem of AI-related activity within the Research Data Alliance (RDA), the RDA Secretariat and RDA-US will host two virtual AI Cross-Fertilization Meetings in September. The sessions are designed to connect AI-focused groups and Birds of a Feather efforts that are currently spread across the RDA community, helping participants identify shared priorities and collaboration opportunities before convening at RDA’s 27th Plenary Meeting (P27) in London. 

8 September 2026, 15:00-16:00 UTC 

Focuses on trust, governance, and standards for AI agents in research data workflows, with pitches on trust-centered strategies for agentic AI, standards for AI agents in research workflows, agent network and access governance, rethinking data discovery through AI, and automation tools for data curation.

10 September 2026, 5:00-6:00 UTC 

Covers FAIR and AI-readiness across the technical stack, with pitches on building a FAIR machine learning management plan, data-software-environment interplay for AI (‘the AI triad’), aligning research software communities and infrastructures, AI-ready data infrastructure, and an introduction to the Global Open Research Commons (GORC) AI Slice.

DataCite, a WDS associate member, is hosting their third Open Hours session of 2026 which will focus on a timely topic for open and reusable research: registering DOIs for software. The discussion will explore how software DOIs can help ensure research software remains discoverable, citable, and accessible over time, supporting stronger attribution and long-term stewardship as software becomes an increasingly central research output. 

Participants will also hear directly from DataCite members about their experiences implementing software DOIs, including practical lessons learned. Whether you are already registering DOIs for research software or are considering how to get started, this session offers a valuable opportunity to compare approaches, ask questions, and connect with others working to improve software citation and persistence. 

Date and Time: 23 September 2026, 15:00 UTC

OpenAIRE, a WDS partner member, will be holding a series of OpenAIRE Graph Community Calls. This series will dive into the makings and workings of one of the world’s largest Scholarly Knowledge Graphs and give attendees the floor to ask questions, provide feedback, and make suggestions. 

Call Dates: 16 September & 18 November 2026 

Call Times: 5:00 EDT | 9:00 UTC 

Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN), a WDS network member, is hosting its CLARIN Annual Conference 2026 in Brighton, United Kingdom, and online 29 September-1 October 2026. This conference is organized for the wider humanities and social sciences communities to exchange ideas and experiences within the CLARIN infrastructure, including the design, construction, and operation of the CLARIN infrastructure; the data, tools, and services that it contains or for which there is a need; its actual use by researchers and teachers, its relation to other infrastructures and projects; and the CLARIN Knowledge Infrastructure. 

The Medical Institutional Repositories in Libraries (MIRL) Symposium is a free virtual event dedicated to institutional repository (IR) management, curation, and promotion in health sciences settings. Their sixth annual meeting will be 19-20 November 2026. Designed for librarians and information professionals supporting research dissemination and stewardship, MIRL offers a focused forum for sharing practices and strengthening IR services in medical and health sciences environments. 

Open Science NL is inviting applications from individuals with expertise in the open science landscape to join its advisory panels, which support national efforts to accelerate the transition to open science in the Netherlands. The panels are made up of independent experts and are designed to keep community needs at the center of Open Science NL’s program development and implementation. Open positions are available across three panels: Citizen Science & Societal Engagement, Open Scholarly Communications, and Software, Hardware en Research Data. 

Panel members help shape Open Science NL’s work by sharing expertise and best practices, providing feedback on the design, feasibility, and progress of funding instruments, and identifying key challenges, opportunities, and emerging trends. Each panel includes up to 14 experts serving three–four year terms. Members are expected to participate in at least two English-language meetings per year (approximately two hours each) and to review and comment on work programs and related documents. 

Submission Deadline: 11 September 2026, 17:00 CET 

Open Science Collaborative of Library and Information Professionals (OSCLIP) invites individuals to contribute their instructional resources to a new OSCLIP initiative dedicated to building a comprehensive knowledge bank for open science instruction for library and information professionals. Their goal is to collect, organize, and share high-quality instructional materials that OSCLIP members can use, adapt, and reuse to inform and enhance their own instruction practices. Carnegie Mellon University, the host of the OSCLIP project, was a Lyrasis 2026 Catalyst Fund Recipient. The awarded amount will be used to help transition the four OSCLIP projects from prototypes to community-validated resources. 

WDS is proud to support the development of the OSCLIP knowledge base with direct involvement in this working group. Join us by sharing your instructional resources.  

Submission Deadline: 25 September 2026 

The First Annual IEEE Workshop on Curation and Contextualization of Extreme Datasets (Extreme Data Curation 2026) aims to convene a cross-disciplinary community to advance data curation as an active, lifecycle-spanning practice—one that maintains, preserves, and adds value not only to data, but also to their computational context at modern extreme scales. The workshop welcomes researchers and practitioners working on the curation of large-scale, heterogeneous datasets, with shared challenges including data quality, provenance, integration, lifecycle management, governance, and metadata standards, across contemporary data-intensive platforms. 

Submissions are open for original research papers on methods, conceptual frameworks, systems, infrastructure, empirical studies, benchmarks, and operational lessons learned, with particular interest in work that connects curation requirements to scientific workflows and to preparing and maintaining AI-ready datasets for AI/ML and data-intensive research. 

Submission Deadline: 1 October 2026 

DAM and Collections Management for Cultural Heritage LA 2027 will take place 17 March 2027, in Los Angeles, California, United States. The in-person event brings together GLAMP professionals (galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and performing arts) to share insights and solutions for the unique challenges of managing cultural heritage collections and digital assets.  

The conference is seeking speakers to share their experience with an expertise in:

If you're interested in speaking or would like to suggest a topic, please reach out to millyl@henrystewart.co.uk. 

Have you run into barriers when sharing, finding, accessing, or working with research data, and want to help improve the tools and practices that underpin long-term preservation? The Horizon Europe-funded EOSC EDEN project is inviting researchers and data professionals to contribute to a survey focused on how communities work with research data, and how archives and repositories support the quality of research (meta)data across the data lifecycle. 

To make it easier for more community members to participate, the survey deadline has been extended. The survey takes approximately 20–30 minutes and is intended to translate recurring pain points into actionable improvements for tools, practices, and collaboration in data curation and digital preservation. 

Extended Survey Deadline: 13 September 2026 

Federated and consortium-based repository models are now common in digital preservation, offering benefits like shared expertise, reduced costs, and greater sustainability. However, these models raise important questions about responsibility and trust certification. 

The CoreTrustSeal Board has published a discussion paper clarifying how responsibility and accountability should be demonstrated in federated environments, especially when using shared or outsourced functions. The main message: shared infrastructure is valuable, but certified repositories must retain clear, active responsibility for preservation. 

Community members are encouraged to review the discussion paper and submit comments by 15 September 2026. 

A joint initiative led by the International Science Council (ISC), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), a WDS associate member, and the Global Young Academy (GYA) aims to develop a global reporting standard for transparent, traceable, and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence in research. The goal is to harmonize disclosure practices across disciplines and publication cultures, supporting research integrity. 

Community input is sought through an open survey; responses will help shape this standard. All researchers and professionals are encouraged to participate by 16 October 2026. 

COP30’s adoption of 59 Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) indicators marks a major step toward measurable climate adaptation, spanning areas such as water stress, crop yields, health readiness, infrastructure resilience, and cultural heritage. However, this article argues that delivering meaningful, comparable reporting will require tackling fragmented data silos, unresolved methodologies, limited capacity in many countries, weak interoperability, and a credible way to integrate qualitative and Indigenous knowledge so reporting reflects real outcomes, not just policies and plans. 

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