[Board] FYI:Report about AGU meeting + question

["Peter Löwe"]

Dear Board,

#1: FYI: 
Here's a short summary regarding last weeks meeting for the Enabling FAIR project (financed through the Amrican Geoscience Union).

For the kick-off meeting in Alexandria, VA, AGU invited 7o persons as stakeholders/representatives from these (overlapping) fields, including, but not limited to AGU-members:
- US-funding agencies, 
- publishers/editors (including Science, Nature, Copernicus, etc.), 
- data repository manager (-> PANGAEA, NASA, etc.)
- data community (RDA, FORCE11, etc.)
- data/publishing infrastructure
- journal workflow vendors
- librarians
- researcher/scientists (covering both early career and end-of career).

I guess I was invited for being part of the data community -- librarian -- data infrastructure/repository triangle [waving the OSGeo-flag during the meeting, of course].

The project goal us to establish a "global multi-stakeholder coalition of multi-stakeholder coalitions" to compile and summarize the current state of the art regarding the FAIR (Findable|Accessible|Interoperable|Reproducible) principles for scientific data. It is noteworthy that in this paradigm,*** software is considered a subset of data *** ! AGU is handling the project management. Based on the compilated materials and best practices about FAIR, pilot applications/workflows/etc. will be created, to be used/tested within the AGU Earth and Space Science Division (ESSI). In a follow up step (after the projects lifespan), those pilots which worked well, shall be extended and applied outside of AGU (driven by global communities like RDA or FORCE11 [and possibly OSGeo]).

IMHO, OSGeo qualifies both as a multi-stakeholder coalition and a research data repository (of repositories?): OSGeo is already being listed in the re3data-repository-of-research-data-repositories: https://www.re3data.org/search?query=OSGeo 

The topic/buzzword "FAIR" will most likely be relevant for the next steps towards a MOU with AGU. As a first step, points of contact at AGU could be identified duing the meeting. I will keep the board updated as the dialogue evolves.

#2: Question 
The current list of board and officers (http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/board_and_officers.html) lists Vice Presidents for five of the existing OSGeo committees. What about the other committees, including the Open Geoscience Committee ?

best,
peter


<peter.loewe at gmx.de>