CoreTrustSeal 2026–2028: Key Changes, Challenges, and Community Support

10 June 2026

This webinar provided an update on recent developments within the CoreTrustSeal certification framework. It introduced the 2026–2028 CoreTrustSeal Requirements, which came into effect earlier this year, and presented key findings from the latest community consultation survey, highlighting areas of consensus on key changes compared to the previous version. In addition, the webinar addressed recurring challenges that repositories face when meeting specific requirements, with particular attention to areas that consistently require additional guidance or interpretation. The discussion explored how CoreTrustSeal endorses and engages with community-led initiatives and good practices designed to support repositories in overcoming these challenges.

Speaker: Olivier Rouchon, Chair of CoreTrustSeal Governing Board

View presentation slides here.

Data Spaces 101 and Their Relevance to Repositories (Session Two)

11 May 2026

The World Data System hosted an engaging introduction to data spaces, a rapidly evolving approach transforming how institutions share, access, and leverage sensitive and non-sensitive sovereign data across organizational and national boundaries. We unpacked the concept of data spaces and explored the DataSpace Protocol (DSP) alongside a suite of emerging ISO standards (e.g., DCP) advancing via the International Data Spaces Association. Discover a variety of data space efforts relevant to basic and applied research, and join peers in the scientific repository community to explore how to advance data spaces in federation with other efforts.

Attendees learned about real-world applications through concise recordings provided by four leading dataspace initiatives: the Australian Shared Environmental Analytics Facility, the OA Book Usage Data Trust, the Computer Network Information Center, and the Canadian National Data Spaces Pilot. These efforts are shaping interoperable, trusted environments for research.

This session offered an excellent opportunity to connect with peers in the repository community, discuss strategies for federating dataspaces, and gain practical insights on developing or integrating dataspaces within your own context. A live Q&A session with the use case speakers followed their presentations, providing direct access to experts and fostering an open dialogue about current challenges and future directions.

We invite all data repository professionals to join us in advancing collaborative, standards-based approaches to data stewardship through data spaces. Want to learn more about data spaces? Check out webinar speaker and co-planner Christina Drummond’s Scholarly Kitchen guest post “Exploring Data Spaces in Scholarly Communications.”

View presentation slides here.

Data Spaces 101 and Their Relevance to Repositories (Session One)

8 May 2026

The World Data System hosted an engaging introduction to data spaces, a rapidly evolving approach transforming how institutions share, access, and leverage sensitive and non-sensitive sovereign data across organizational and national boundaries. We unpacked the concept of data spaces and explored the DataSpace Protocol (DSP) alongside a suite of emerging ISO standards (e.g., DCP) advancing via the International Data Spaces Association. Discover a variety of data space efforts relevant to basic and applied research, and join peers in the scientific repository community to explore how to advance data spaces in federation with other efforts.

Attendees learned about real-world applications through concise recordings provided by four leading dataspace initiatives: the Australian Shared Environmental Analytics Facility, the OA Book Usage Data Trust, the Computer Network Information Center, and the Canadian National Data Spaces Pilot. These efforts are shaping interoperable, trusted environments for research.

This session offered an excellent opportunity to connect with peers in the repository community, discuss strategies for federating dataspaces, and gain practical insights on developing or integrating dataspaces within your own context. A live Q&A session with the use case speakers followed their presentations, providing direct access to experts and fostering an open dialogue about current challenges and future directions.

We invite all data repository professionals to join us in advancing collaborative, standards-based approaches to data stewardship through data spaces. Want to learn more about data spaces? Check out webinar speaker and co-planner Christina Drummond’s Scholarly Kitchen guest post “Exploring Data Spaces in Scholarly Communications.”

View presentation slides here.

Building an Ecosystem for Sustainable Urban Informatics: Open Science and Reproducibility

20 April 2026

The Urban Analytics Lab is a research group at the National University of Singapore with a holistic commitment to urban informatics: not just conducting analytical research but building an ecosystem that supports sustainable and human-centered development of the field and cross-pollination with other domains. This agenda includes foundational research such as advancing spatial data quality assessments, open data benchmarking, investigations on crowdsourcing, and advancing GeoAI methodologies alongside structural developments including tools, datasets, standards, and community initiatives. This presentation provided a high-level overview of the agenda illustrated through recent outputs: papers introducing novel applications of emerging data (such as street view imagery) and recent open-source software, open datasets, and community-building initiatives in journals and beyond. The presentation included reflections and lessons learned on fostering reproducibility and open science practices such as open data sharing.

Filip Biljecki is an Assistant Professor at NUS and the founder of the NUS Urban Analytics Lab, a research group distinguished by its commitment to open science through the release and maintenance of numerous open-source software packages and open data projects that are freely accessible to researchers and practitioners worldwide. He holds MSc and PhD degrees from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Advancing open and collaborative research practices, Filip serves the community as an associate editor for multiple journals in urban studies and contributes to open standards development through his involvement in the Open Geospatial Consortium. He is currently editing a special issue dedicated to open-source software in urban data science for a leading journal in his field, furthering the adoption of transparent and reproducible research methods.

View presentation slides here.

Data Rescue Efforts at a Defunded Data Repository

11 March 2026

This webinar, featuring Alex de Sherbinin, focused 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 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.

Alex de Sherbinin served as a manager of the NASA SEDAC from 2006-2025. He was also a member then chair of the WDS Scientific Committee from 2015-2021, of which SEDAC was a regular member. Dr. de Sherbinin is a geographer whose research interests focus on the human aspects of global environmental change and geospatial data applications, integration, and dissemination.

View presentation slides here.