[CODATA-international] The FAIR well message by CODATA Past-President, Barend Mons

[Asha CODATA]

<http://codata.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/codata_new_logo-3.png>Five
years flew by, including a pandemic that locked us in our corners of the
world for quite some time. One of the fond memories I will keep from my
CODATA presidency is how the staff and the Executive Committee stand
together, both in times of joint progression and in times that were
challenging due to natural and geopolitical disasters.

Before I dive in some scientific and policy content, let me first express
my gratitude to the exceptional staff of the CODATA Secretariat. Simon and
Hana, who operate as a Formula 1 pit stop team in good and bad times, as
well as Laura and Asha…

I can see only one flaw in the team (which I share myself and probably even
aggravated): they work too hard! But – they also know how to enjoy the rare
moments of relaxation we had. In short, the team made my period as CODATA
President a great experience and I am very proud that I have worked with
such an impactful global organisation. Not that they are totally rid of me
now…

My successor Mercè Crosas inherits not only the team, but also an
impressive Executive Committee. The ‘ExComm’ of CODATA plays a very
important and active role, and I have experienced it as a uniquely
motivated group of strongly networked professionals that enables the global
impact of CODATA. Mercè will be the ideal President now as she is a bridge
builder. In the coming decade CODATA needs to be more than ever a
consolidator and a convener of like-minded data stewards, scientists,
policy makers and increasingly also the private sector.

The two new Vice-Presidents, Daisy and Richard, who both were ExComm
members during my presidency and in whom I built a lot of trust, will form
a great team with Mercè, other Officers and the Secretariat.

Let me now move on to some achievements of which CODATA can be proud and
reflect a bit on its future. I’d like to start with the initiative taken by
our previous Vice-President Jianhui Li, named ‘The Global Open Science
Cloud (GOSC)
<https://codata.org/initiatives/decadal-programme2/global-open-science-cloud/>’,
aimed to be a mechanism for collaboration among the Open Science Cloud-type
initiatives springing up all around the world. This is an activity that is
clearly in CODATA’s mandate and mission, referenced in the International
Science Council (ISC) Action Plan, and continuing CODATA’s longstanding
engagement with Open Science platform initiatives in Africa, South East
Asia and elsewhere, as well as our major contribution to the UNESCO
Recommendation on Open Science. With the success of the first International
Symposium on Open Science Clouds and the creation of an International
Programme Office, GOSC is now a truly global initiative, where the
leadership of regional open science initiatives collaborates towards global
interoperability of data and services, one of the core aims of CODATA for
the coming decade.

The second one is WorldFAIR <https://worldfair-project.eu/>. In
collaboration with GO FAIR for the FAIR Implementation Profile methodology,
and with RDA as a partner, this is a true ‘DataTogether’ project, but I
want to applaud Simon and the team of CODATA for their leadership in this
project. I sincerely hope that the intended expansion of the project to a
multi-annual programme, provisionally called WorldFAIR+, will take the
approach to a next level and optimally use the global networks and mandates
of the participating organisations to contribute to global convergence and
interoperability of data and services.

Finally, we jointly started a professional outlet for what we now call FAIR
Enabling Resources, ranging from vocabularies used and maintained by
recognised expert communities, like those collaborating in GOSC and
WorldFAIR. This innovative platform is called FAIRconnect
<https://fairconnect.pro/> and supports the global community of data
stewards, organisations and funders that take FAIR seriously. FAIR is
everywhere now, but implementing it properly requires a lot of skills,
tooling and resources. FAIRconnect is meant to be the place where machines
and people can find FAIR enabling resources that are increasingly qualified
by the professional data stewardship community.

CODATA, with its strong, growing and executed mandate of the International
Science Council is set to play a leading role in the policies and practices
around good data stewardship and data-intensive science and innovation. As
Mercè stressed in her candidacy statement
<https://codata.org/blog/2023/10/16/merce-crosas-candidacy-for-codata-president/>,
CODATA should continue to collaborate well with the other international
data organisations.  WDS, as the ISC affiliated body dealing with
high-quality data repositories and also fully committed to the FAIR
principles, will be a valuable sister organisation. RDA will continue its
valuable grass roots role, addressing major data issues and CODATA will
continue to collaborate with the RDA Secretariat, leadership and with many
of the RDA WGs. GO FAIR will play its part in networking those
organisations that align with the interpretation and implementation of the
FAIR principles as they were originally conceived and adopted, including
CODATA, its parent organisation (ISC) and its global networks.

And again, I hope to be able to contribute to and support several of these
exciting projects as the Past-President, without being in the way of the
new leadership!

<http://codata.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/barand.jpg>
Thanks,
Asha
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