5 March 2025

Join the World Data System (WDS) for our upcoming webinar: “Data Rescue Efforts at a Defunded Data Repository". This presentation focuses on data rescue efforts and other lessons learned in the wake of the contract termination of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), which was managed by Columbia University’s Center for Integrated Earth System Information (CIESIN) since the late 1990s. It offers lessons for other data repositories and underscores the importance of solidarity in the data community in the face of shrinking resources and waning political support for data preservation. 

Speaker: Alex de Sherbinin, Director and Senior Research Scientist, Center for Integrated Earth System Information (CIESIN), Columbia University 

Webinar Date: 11 March 2026, 11:00 EDT | 15:00 UTC 

You can read a corresponding article by Alex de Sherbinin, titled "Things Fall Apart: Lessons from a Defunded Data Repository," here.

WDS is proud to highlight Jared Lyle, Archivist at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) -- a WDS regular member since 2016 -- and a member of the CoreTrustSeal (CTS) Board for the 2024–2027 term. 

Jared directs the Metadata and Preservation Unit at ICPSR and serves as Executive Director of the DDI Alliance, advancing open metadata standards to enhance research data quality, interoperability, and reusability. As a CoreTrustSeal Board member, he contributes to the global certification of trustworthy data repositories, championing sustainable and transparent practices in data stewardship. 

WDS values his ongoing commitment to excellence in repository certification. We look forward to further collaboration as he continues to advocate for best practices in data management. 

Are you attending the 2026 GEO Symposium and GEO-21 Plenary in Geneva, Switzerland, 26-28 May 2026? We welcome you to join the WDS delegation to help play your part in shaping Earth Intelligence for a resilient future. Please reach out to us at wds-ipo@utk.edu to have your name added to the list. Delegate names are due no later than 27 March.

The National High Energy Physics Science Data Center (NHEPSDC) focuses on the aggregation and sharing of scientific data generated during research activities in the field of high energy physics, encompassing data resources, software tools, and data analysis capabilities. The data center provides services to researchers, students, and other users worldwide for fundamental research in high energy physics, neutron science, synchrotron radiation experiments, astrophysics, and other interdisciplinary research fields.

NHEPSDC and WDS share the common goals of ensuring access to high quality data, providing data services, and creating community through the sharing and preservation of data. These shared goals make the NHEPSDC an ideal partner for WDS. The National High Energy Physics Scientific Data Center became a regular member of WDS in February 2026.

The Geo Big Data Open Platform operated by the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) is a national research data repository dedicated to long-term preservation, open access, and responsible reuse of geoscience and environmental data. KIGAM actively provides DOI-assigned datasets, standardized metadata, and open access services aligned with the FAIR principles, and contributes to national and international research data ecosystems through interoperability with the Korean national research data platform (DataON).

The Geo Big Data Open Platform and WDS both work toward long-term data preservation, open access, and data preservation. Their commitment to these common goals illustrates why they will make an excellent partner for WDS. The Geo Big Data Open Platform became a regular member of WDS in February 2026.

The Dataverse Community Meeting 2026 will be held 13-15 May 2026 in Barcelona, Spain. The conference theme is “Advancing Data and Dataverse: AI, Interoperability, and Sensitive Data.” This theme highlights key areas of interest for data professionals and researchers: building AI solutions for data to enhance repository workflows, data quality, and AI-ready data; improving interoperability to enable richer linkage and reuse across datasets, domains, and platforms; and expanding support for sensitive and restricted data.

Early Bird Registration Deadline: 9 March 2026

Standard Registration Deadline: 15 April 2026

Last Minute Registration Deadline: 30 April 2026

Research Data Alliance-United States (RDA-US) is inviting the RDA-US community and the broader research data ecosystem to an in-person community gathering in Washington, DC, United States, 17-18 March 2026 at the University of California Washington Center (UCDC). This gathering will coincide with a shared plenary viewing of the RDA 26th Plenary and offer plenty of opportunities to connect, learn, and collaborate across projects, Working Groups, Interest Groups, and institutions. This event will also include activities connected to the RDA-US 2026 Cohort.

A draft agenda can be found on the RDA-US website. For questions, contact Maria Praetzellis (maria.praetzellis@ucop.edu).

The Research Data Alliance (RDA), in partnership with Microsoft, is hosting a series of online information sessions titled “Agentic AI Tools in Research.” These sessions are designed to engage and educate attendees on the topic of agentic AI, and each will have two times available.

Session Dates & Times:

Registration is now open for the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC)’s upcoming Supporter Spotlight Panel and Webinar Series: Pre‑Procurement – What You Need to Know Before You Buy. This series is designed to support organizations preparing to procure digital preservation solutions, whether they are starting out or refining an established approach.
 
Event Dates & Times:

The State of Digital Preservation in Repositories: Policies, Practices, and Gaps webinar, hosted by Controlled LOCKSS [Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe] (CLOCKSS), will feature José Manuel Barrueco (University of Valencia, Spain), co-author of a comprehensive systematic literature review on digital preservation in institutional repositories, and Dr. Alicia Wise (CLOCKSS). During their in-depth conversation, they will unpack what we actually know about preservation policies, strategies, tools, and implementation across global institutional repositories and why so many repositories remain unprepared for long-term stewardship.

Date & Time: 24 March 2026, 15:00 UTC

NASIG is hosting an upcoming webinar titled “Usage Metrics for AI, OA, and More.” In this webinar, attendees will hear from the COUNTER team about how the Code of Practice provides a solid foundation on which new reporting needs can be built. This session will explore how publishers are already delivering OA-optimized reporting, share best practices for capturing usage of syndicated content, and unpack how the COUNTER community is working together to develop practical guidelines for reporting AI usage - and how a zero-click world doesn't necessarily mean zero-usage.

Date & Time: 24 March 2026, 17:00-18:00 UTC

The “Do They Really Guide? Guidelines for the Use of LLMs in Scholarly Publishing” workshop will explore present guidelines, identify differences and overlaps among them, and discuss their feasibility and reasonableness. Publishers and authors will share their perspectives on the topic during the first session of the workshop. 

This workshop will be held in Mannheim, Germany, on 25 March 2026.  

DataCite is hosting the first DataCite Open Hours of 2026. In this session, attendees will receive updates from the DataCite team, including new and upcoming feature developments, and will hear from new community members about how they are using DataCite services.

Date & Time: 25 March 2026, 15:00 UTC

The Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) Archiving 2026 conference will take place 20-23 July 2026 at Harvard University’s David Rubenstein Treehouse in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The conference will showcase the latest research in imaging, digitization, and their related fields; delve into emerging technologies, strategic approaches, and policy frameworks; highlight case studies as benchmarks; and explore diverse platforms and visualization methods to deepen connections with collections. Registration opens 30 March 2026.

Key Themes:

iPRES 2026, which will be held 21-25 September 2026 in Copenhagen, Denmark, is accepting proposals for contributions to the conference. The themes for this conference are Community, Preservation, and Horizon. The following proposals will be accepted: full papers, short papers, workshops, tutorials, panels, and posters.

Submission Deadline: 9 March 2026

Proposals for sessions are open for “AI Unlocked: Empowering Higher Education through Research and Discovery,” which will be held by National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot and ACCESS. The conference will be in Denver, Colorado, United States, from 2-3 June 2026. Proposals focused on advancing AI-enabled research, education, and discovery in higher education are invited.

Session Types:

Proposal Deadline: 9 March 2026 

The Canadian Polar Data Workshop VI (CPDW6) will be held 8–12 June 2026, at St. Jerome’s University, located at the University of Waterloo, Ontario.

Abstracts for both oral presentations and posters will be accepted on a wide variety of data, information, and knowledge related topics. While talks or posters on general topics will be considered, priority will be given to abstracts focused on the polar regions and northern Indigenous Knowledge research.

Abstracts are invited for the following proposed conference sessions:

Abstract submissions will be accepted until 13 March 2026.

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is currently looking for an author to write a short Guidance Note on the topic of “Disaster Planning for Digital Repositories and Archives.” The DPC's series of Guidance Notes provides brief overviews of specific digital preservation challenges and solutions (typically 2-5 pages in length), combining accessibility with practical information and actionable advice or recommendations.

If interested, email Michael Popham (michael.popham@dpconline.org) and briefly outline your interest and any relevant expertise.

The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) is accepting expressions of interest for several positions, offering the opportunity to contribute to the Digital Humanities field. The positions open include Executive Board Chair-Elect, Deputy Treasurer, Executive Board Deputy Secretary, and Deputy Conference Officer. Full role descriptions and application details can be found on their website.

The CLARIN Conference 2026 will take place in Brighton, United Kingdom, and online, from 29 September-1 October 2026. The conference is organized for the wider Humanities and Social Sciences (SSH) community to exchange experiences and best practices in working with the CLARIN infrastructure and to share plans for future developments. Submissions describing CLARIN-related work addressing the following aspects are invited:

Submission Deadline: 6 April 2026

The 13th International Conference on CMC and Social Media Corpora for the Humanities (CMC-Corpora) has an open call for papers to be presented. The CMC-Corpora 2026 Conference will be held in Oulu, Finland, 27–28 August 2026. This conference merges language-centered research on computer-mediated communication (CMC) and social media across linguistics, philologies, communication and media studies, foreign language teaching and learning, and the social sciences. Two types of submissions will be accepted: short papers (3-5 pages) and abstracts (max. 300 words).

Submission Deadline: 15 April 2026

A call for papers is open for the International CLaDA-BG Conference 2026, which will be held 25-26 June 2026 in Sofia, Bulgaria. This conference aims to bring together Natural Language Processing (NLP) developers, linguists, digital humanitarians, scholars, and all parties interested in knowledge modeling and linking data for research. The following submission types will be accepted:

Submit full papers or extended abstracts in PDF to the following email: ltadh-ra@bultreebank.org 

Submission Deadline: 19 April 2026

The Digital Parliamentary Data in Action (DiPaDA) 2026, being held on 16 September 2026 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, is accepting submissions to their open call for papers. The aim of this conference is to foster dialogue across disciplines and to strengthen the foundations for future research on the political, cultural, and linguistic heritage preserved in parliamentary records. Full papers and extended abstracts will be accepted and should follow these guidelines:

Submission Deadline: 24 April 2026

The Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) program is taking submissions for an upcoming special issue in the Journal of Hazards, Risk and Resilience (JHRR). This special issue will focus on advancing community-based disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, with a particular focus on innovative research led by young scientists. Themes and submission guidelines can be found here.

Submission Deadline: 30 April 2026

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is accepting applications for two opportunities to perform experiments, one from the HyperGES Program and another from the DropTES Program.  

HyperGES: Run experiments under hypergravity using the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Large Diameter Centrifuge in the Netherlands.

Expression of Interest Form Deadline: 31 March 2026 

Application Deadline: 1 June 2026 

DropTES: Conduct microgravity experiments at Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM)’s Bremen Drop Tower or GraviTower in Germany. This project also partners with the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

Expression of Interest Form Deadline: 31 March 2026 

Application Deadline: 30 June 2026 

European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)-FIDELIS will allocate a total of €200,000 in financial support to enable around 40 successful applicants to participate as mentors in one of a series of support programs, through two open calls. Each of the support programs will focus on a particular theme related to Trustworthy Digital Repositories and will aim to share real-life experiences on tools, methods, and/or approaches that have been taken. Themes being addressed in the first open call include:

The Arctic Data Center is conducting their third biennial survey of the Arctic research community to develop a better understanding of the networks, forums, tools, workshops, and training courses that support Arctic research collaboration, as well as the management and use of Arctic data. The survey should take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete.

Survey Deadline: 25 March 2026

The Community Survey working group of nestor (the German Network of Expertise in Digital Preservation) launched the Community Survey several years ago. This survey provides a structured overview of networks active in the field and is repeated every three years to reflect ongoing developments. The 2026 iteration of the nestor Community Survey is now open.

Survey Deadline: 31 March 2026

The Data Curation Core Competencies study, being conducted by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, focuses on data curation, stewardship, and management. The data obtained will help improve education and training in this area. Participation will entail completing a 15-20-minute-long, anonymous survey. Participant responses will be linked by a unique identifier for any analysis, and no direct identifiers will be collected; however, all findings will be reported in the aggregate, and any indirect identifiers will be removed prior to analysis through de-identification and anonymization.

For questions or concerns about this study, or if you have experienced a research-related problem or injury, contact the lead researcher, Bradley Wade Bishop: wade.bishop@utk.edu

The LOCKSS Program at Stanford University is conducting research to assess digital preservation practices, capacity, and needs at memory institutions worldwide, expanding on a survey conducted in 2019 as part of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)-funded Stepping Stones project. Data from this new survey will help identify the geographic regions and communities with the greatest need for new digital preservation services and networks, highlight potential opportunities to build community-owned preservation infrastructure, and complement other assessment projects related to digital preservation, including the NDSA Staffing Survey and DPC-RAM.

All those who work with born-digital and digitized collection materials in any institutional setting are welcome to participate. The survey should take about 15 minutes to complete, and questions can be previewed here.

The Alliance for Data Science and AI has launched its new website. This update reflects their recent evolution to the Alliance for Data Science and AI (ADSA). Due to the continued convergence of data science and AI initiatives across higher education, ADSA has expanded its focus to more fully support AI institutes, programs, and campus-wide initiatives alongside data science efforts.

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