On April 3rd and 4th, fifty DataCite members gathered in Barcelona for DataCite’s annual Member Meeting and General Assembly. The Member Meeting provides a venue for DataCie members to help shape DataCite’s strategic direction. The General Assembly is DataCite’s official governing body and approves fee structures, budgets, and elects our Executive Board.
In person or remotely, more than 90% of our Members joined the meetings to discuss the future of data sharing and how DataCite can best serve the needs of researchers, institutions, funding bodies, publishers and others.
The Member Meeting was lively and filled with productive discussions on the progressive growth of DataCite. The members also reviewed who are the DataCite’s most important stakeholders and explored how we can better meet their needs. Finally, shared what they value most about the DataCite community and how they envision the future of the organization:
- DataCite provides an interoperable Metadata Schema for all sorts of research outputs
- DataCite develops clear guidelines on how to use DOIs
- DataCite supports seamless integration between identifiers for data, code, publications, individuals and organizations
- DataCite DOI metrics are accounted for in all ranking systems
- DataCite keeps its fees affordable and offers useful services to promote adoption worldwide
Beginning last year, DataCite opened its membership up to any organization that shares our data sharing mission, effectively broadening our community to incorporate new points of view. Start-ups, research hospitals, service providers, computing centers and more have now joined DataCite and individually and together they enrich DataCite’s stakeholder community. They all provide different perspectives, requirements and solutions that shape DataCite’s services.
The General Assembly successfully crystallized the needs of the community and the future of DataCite by implementing several changes for the organization. Paramount is DataCite’s new service fee structure which lowers the barrier to membership and allows for were approved for smaller organizations to join DataCite. Our new fee structure is summarized on our website!
