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2005 CODATA representative Annual Report

  • To: epc@iucr.org
  • Subject: 2005 CODATA representative Annual Report
  • From: Brian McMahon <bm@iucr.org>
  • Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 15:28:09 +0100
For your information, here is a copy of the CODATA annual report for
2005 that I have just posted to Mike Dacombe.

Brian


IUCr 2005 Report - ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology
(CODATA)

Much of CODATA's work during 2005 was related to the second phase of
the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS, Tunis, November
2005).  Following the discussions in the special session of the 19th
International CODATA Conference (see
http://www.iucr.org/iucr-top/data/docs/codata2004_berlin.html), a
number of activities identified by the participants as important
within the framework of WSIS commenced in January 2005:

In collaboration with the US National Academies, the US National
Committee for CODATA, and wsis-online, CODATA compiled an inventory
of more than 500 scientific activities that directly or indirectly
related to the Agenda for Action and Declaration of Principles that
came from the Geneva phase of the WSIS:
http://www.wsis-online.net/science/home_EN/ and
http://www.codata.org/wsis/CODATA-Inventory2Nov05.pdf.

An editorial on 'Science and the Digital Divide' was published in the
journal Science on 21 October 2005 (p. 405), written by Professor
S. Iwata (CODATA President) and Dr R. Chen (CODATA Secretary
General).

A CODATA international workshop, 'Creating the Information Commons
for e-Science: Toward Institutional Policies and Guidelines for
Action', was held at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 1-2
September 2005. The meeting was sponsored by UNESCO, ICSU, TWAS,
INASP, and ICSTI, in collaboration with the OECD.  The sponsoring
organizations were supportive of further explorations of the
feasibility of creating a Global Information Commons for Science
Initiative.  This initiative was officially launched at a round-table
session organized by CODATA in Tunis on 14 November 2005. Panel
participants included representatives of all the organizations
sponsoring the UNESCO meeting, together with CERN and Science Commons
(http://sciencecommons.org).  CODATA also held a side event at WSIS
on 17 November 2005 to highlight the Initiative for WSIS
participants.

Other activities during the year included:

Publication (February 2005) of the independent review conducted by
CODATA of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF);

Scientific Markup Languages Workshop in association with the
NSF/National Science Digital Library (Denver, 10-11 June 2005), at
which I.D. Brown (Chair of COMCIFS) represented the IUCr in a
presentation of the Crystallographic Information File format;

Annual Meeting of the CODATA Task Group on Fundamental Constants
(Paris, 28 June 2005), confirming the schedule for publication of a
revised set of recommended values for fundamental physical constants
by the end of December 2006;

Workshop on Strategies for Permanent Access to Scientific Information
in Southern Africa: Focus on Health and Environmental Information for
Sustainable Development (Pretoria, 5-7 September 2005), sponsored by
the Task Group on Preservation of and Access to Scientific and Technical
Data in Developing Countries (among the recommendations of this
Workshop, focusing primarily on the African context, are mandates
for scholars to expose their research via open access to preprints
and e-prints, and for long-term curation of research outputs);

International Symposium on the Generalization of Information (Berlin,
14-16 September 2005);

International Symposium "Multimedia: Where Do We Go From Here?"
(Berlin, 19-20 September 2005), sponsored by the CODATA Task Group on
Multimedia, Visualization, Data and Information;

formation of a Strategic Planning Committee arising from the
recommendations for strategic development passed at the 24th CODATA
General Assembly, in which the undersigned had some early involvement.


B. McMahon, IUCr Representative.
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