Year 2025 in Review

We at the depositar lab wish you a joyful Lunar New Year. We take this occasion to summarize below our works from the previous year (2025-01 – 2025-12).

Hosted Projects and Datasets

• There have been 3,257 datasets deposited and made public at the depositar, the research data repository we build and operate, by the end of Year 2025 (2025-12-31). The datasets have accumulated more than one million views.

• More than 500 projects have been hosted at the depositar by 2025 (2025-12-31).

• For more statistics and charts, please visit the depositar’s stats page.

System Upgrade and Enhancement

• The system underlining the depositar (data.depositar.io) had been upgraded six times (from v6.7.2 to v6.7.7).

• The depositar introduced a new interface based on Bootstrap 5.

• In late 2025, we made a change to the depositar so that a dataset not belonging to any project can only be edited by its uploader and collaborators.

• The depositar stats page has been released online.

• The Research Data Management Hub (RDM Hub) has been rebuilt as a static site generated by Hugo and Sveltia CMS.

Writing on Research Data Management (RDM)

• Ten new articles appeared on the RDM Hub website. Some of them were also published in Science and Technology Report 《科技報導》, appearing on the journal’s website on 2025-03-19, 2025-08-15, 2025-11-15, and 2025-12-15.

Seminar and Outreach

• In February, we are invited by the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Academia Sinica to share experience about research data management during the Institute’s weekly Geotalk event.

• In May, we gave a talk at the National Chengchi University Library on Bringing research data to life - Research Data Management x Open Science strategy.

• In July, we joined the Research Data Alliance (RDA) & International Data Week 2025 Webinar to talk about our work in Taiwan.

• In November, we joined RDA again during their Oceania and Asia Data Roundtable to share about our Data Management Plan localization project.

• In December, we co-hosted an online workshop on Open Science Tools at the invitation of Professor Chuan-Kai Lin from National Sun Yat-sen University.

• We held Research Data Management Remote Office Hour (研究資料管理線上諮詢) in December, 2025.

Presentation at International Conference

• In April, we presented Recently Orphaned Newspapers: From Archived Webpages to Reusable Datasets and Research Outlooks at the Web Archiving Conference 2025 (WAC2025) in Oslo, Norway, in the Discovery & Access (News/Newspapers) session.

• In June, we presented Automated Data Analytics: A Statistical Dashboard Built with GitLab CI/CD for a Data Repository Based on CKAN at the 20th International Conference on Open Repositories (OR2025) in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

• In July, we presented a poster, Historical Vernacular Houses in the Hualien River Basin of Eastern Taiwan: A Spatial Humanities Investigation with Research Data Management Planning, at Digital Humanities 2025 (DH 2025) in Lisbon, Portugal.

• In August, we delivered the aforementioned work, Recently Orphaned Newspapers, to audiences in Taiwan at COSCUP (Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters), the largest gathering of its kind in Asia, under the Traditional Chinese title 〈當代的孤兒報刊：網頁保存、研究資料、以及未來展望〉.

• In September, we give a talk on Advancing Research Data Management in Southeast Asia: Gaps, Challenges, & Policy Recommendations at the PNC 2025 Annual Conference and Joint Meetings, in Hanoi, Vietnam.

• In October, we delivered two presentations at the International Data Week 2025:

  • Building Sustainable Research Data Services in Taiwan: Experience from the depositar as part of the panel Research data stewardship in the Asia Pacific – What is happening now and how to move forward?
  • The Role of Data in AI for Science, presented in the AI for Science — CODATA Convened Session as well as in the Co-Designing AI Readiness: CODATA’s Call to the Global Data Community session.

Internship Students, Visiting scholars, and New Lab Member

• A total of seven internship students were received in the Summer of 2025. We organized short courses for the interns on Linux, Git, 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 stipends working on projects related to RDM, digital preservation, and data policies.

• Dr. Yoann Goudin (Université Lyon 3 – Jean Moulin) visited the lab in the summer working on a thematic research project funded by Academia Sinica on island soundscape.

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

• Ting-Yu Chuang joined the lab in March as an assistant engineer then departed at the end of year for a position at TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).

Serving Research Data Communities

• We continue to work with Taiwan’s Long-term Social-Ecological Research Network in fostering good data management practices.

• Hilary Shiue served in the RDM Terminology Working Group of CODATA during the 2025 review cycle.

• Tyng-Ruey Chuang finished his third term in the Executive Committees of CODATA (Committee on DATA), International Science Cuncil.

• Tyng-Ruey Chuang continues to serve in CODATA Taiwan and Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility (TaiBIF) as national committee members.

• 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.