Year 2024 in Review

On the last day of the first month of the Lunar New Year, we at the depositar lab wish you a joyful New Year. We take this occasion to summarize below our works from the previous year (2024-01 – 2024-12).

Hosted Projects and Datasets

• There have been 2,661 datasets deposited and made public at the depositar, the research data repository we build and operate, by the end of Year 2024 (2024-12-31). The number of public datasets now grows to 2,725 (2025-02-27).

• There are now 359 projects hosted at the depositar (2025-02-27).

System Upgrade and Enhancement

• The system underlining the depositar (data.depositar.io) had been upgraded six times (from v6.6.3 to v6.7.1).

• The CKAN package, which is the core of the depositar, has been updated to version 2.10 with email login, table view, Font Awesome 6.0 icons, and more.

Writing on Research Data Management (RDM)

• Seven new articles appeared on the RDM Hub website.

• Of the above, five were cross-posted on the Science and Technology Monthly website (on 2024-01-15, 2024-03-15,2024-05-15, 2024-09-30, and 2024-11-14).

Seminar and Outreach

• We set up a booth for presenting the depositar services at the CABE 2024 Conference from January 22-24, 2024.

• We gave a presentation on The Development of depositar—An Open Repository for FAIR Data (貼近 FAIR 資料原則的開放儲存庫——研究資料寄存所的發展) at the Center for GIS, RCHSS, Academia Sinica on Feb 27, 2024.

• We gave a presentation at the National Tsing Hua University Library (Special Collection Division) on March 14, 2024.

• We presented Research Data Management and Repository; The depositar — Introduction & Hands-on ( 研究資料管理與寄存；研究資料寄存所介紹與使用) at a user training workshop organized by the NSTC Core Computing Service (ASGC) in Academia Sinica on March 28, 2024.

• We introduced data management planning and the depositar at the Long Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) Data Management Plan (DMP) workshop in Taipei on April 1, 2024.

• We collaborated with TaiBIF to host two DMP mini-workshops. Both workshops are held at the Biodiversity Research Center of Academia Sinica, one on May 22 and the other on November 8.

• We gave a presentation on What Countries Are Releasing Data Strategies, What Should Taiwan Do? at COSCUP on August 3, 2024.

• We gave a presentation on Small Teams in Contemporary Archiving: Reflection and Outlook at COSCUP on August 4, 2024.

• We gave a presentation, titled Enhancing Research Reproducibility: Recent Tools and Policy Developments, at the National Cheng Kung University on August 19, 2024.

• We gave a webinar at the invitation of the National Cheng Kung University Library, providing a tour of the depositar services on October 3, 2024.

• We presented Small Teams in Contemporary Archiving: Reflection and Outlook at the invitation of the organizers of the 2024 Wikidata Cross-Domain Forum on October 27, 2024.

• We participated in the Open Access Week at the National Taiwan Normal University. We delivered a presentation, titled An Introduction to Research Data Management by ways of Research Data Repositories (從研究資料儲存庫出發的研究資料管理實務), on October 29, 2024.

• At the invitation of the CKAN community, we gave an overview of the depositar in English at the CKAN Monthly Live on November 20, 2024. About 50 people over the world attended.

• We hosted an online English webinar on What is Research Data Management, and how can the depositar help? on December 12, 2024. More than 80 people, from Taiwan and elsewhere in the global, attended.

Presentation at International Conference

• We gave a presentation, titled The Development of depositar—An Open Repository for FAIR Data, on Feb. 1, 2024, at an international conference hosted by the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University Library.

• We presented Bringing Computation and Reproducibility to a Data Repository Using Binder and Building An Open Repository for FAIR Data: Experience Sharing on Technologies, Communities, and Policies at Open Repositories 2024 (OR2024) in Göteborg on June 3-6, 2024 (conference report).

• We present a poster, titled A Contemplation on Semantic Indexing with Persistent Identifiers, at Digital Humanities 2024 which took places at George Mason University on August 6-9, 2024. We are glad the poster received some feedback.

• In a session on Research Data Management and Planning in the Humanities at the PNC 2024 Annual Conference and Joint Meetings, held in Seoul on August 29-31, 2024, we spoke about The Active Roles of Research Data Repositories in Cultural Landscape Documentation .

Internship Students, Visiting Scholar, and New Lab Member

• A total of five internship students were received in the Summer of 2024. We organized short courses for the interns on RDM, Jupyter Book, QGIS, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, among others. They also worked on short-term projects.

• In addition, the lab continues to support several students with stipend on projects related to RDM, digital preservation, and data policies.

• Dr. James X. Morris continues to visit the depositar lab. He is a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for GIS, RCHSS, Academia Sinica.

• Hilary Shiue joined the depositar team in September as a Data Management Specialist. Ming-Syuan Ho, our project manager, departed at the end of October to take up a position at the National Institute of Cyber Security (NICS) of the Ministry of Digital Affairs (moda).

Serving Research Data Communities

• We continue to work with the Long-term Social-Ecological Research Network (LTSER) program, funded by Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), in fostering good data management practices.

• We were asked to provide input to the Science & Technology Policy Advisory Office of the NSTC about scientific data policies.

• Tyng-Ruey Chuang, the project lead of the depositar lab, serves as a consultant to the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) project funded by NSTC.

• Tyng-Ruey Chuang is serving in the Executive Committee of CODATA (Committee on DATA) at the International Science Cuncil for a third term.

• Tyng-Ruey Chuang has been appointed to serve in the National Committees of CODATA, of Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility, and of Future Earth Taipei.

• Tyng-Ruey Chuang co-chairs Academia Sinica’s Generative AI Risk Study Committee in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

We wish you all a fruitful New Year! – Ally, Cheng-Jen, Hilary, Tyng-Ruey, and Winnie.