Reevaluating WDS's Data Stewardship Award with DORA in mind

The World Data System’s mission is to enhance the capabilities, impact and sustainability of our member data repositories and data services by creating trusted communities of scientific data repositories, strengthening the scientific enterprise through the entire lifecycle of data and all related components creating first-class data that feeds first-class research output, and advocating for accessible data and transparent and reproducible science.

In December 2023, the WDS Scientific Commitee formally endorsed the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) (see: https://sfdora.org/), an initiative designed to improve how scholarly research is assessed.  As an organizational signatory, WDS must prove our actions towards research assessment best practices. In 2024, WDS-IPO office reformulated our Data Stewardship Awards (https://worlddatasystem.org/news-events/data-stewardship-awards/), including the process of nominating award candidates, the onboarding of reviewers, and the rubric used for the award. WDS recently announced its winners for the revamped award, and awarded them at International Data Week 2025 in Brisbane, Australia, 13-16 October 2025.

Past award winners, WDS Early Career Research Network members, WDS SC members, and WDS staff provided feedback and input on the award process over a 3-month period. The outcomes of the discussions and implementations of changes to the award were shared. Additionally, our lessons learned was reviewed, and we had a conversation with the audience on how researchers can receive credit for data deposit and/or reuse.