The Center for Open Science (COS) has received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to develop a community-driven strategic plan focused on the long-term preservation, accessibility, and usability of federally funded scientific data. The award follows significant concern in 2025 after public datasets were removed from multiple federal agency websites, highlighting the need for sustained and resilient systems that protect access to scientific outputs.
The funded effort, titled Ensuring the Preservation, Accessibility, and Usability of Public Data, will be led by COS with co-direction from a stakeholder planning committee representing organizations across the research and scientific data communities. Planning committee members include representatives from DataCite, CODE, the Data Rescue Project, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, ESIP, the Data Foundation, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and other institutions. Alex Wade is serving as lead consultant.
The project will align with existing community-driven initiatives such as the Internet Archive, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, and the Data Rescue Project to establish a framework for long-term stewardship of federally funded datasets. The resulting strategic plan will guide approaches for monitoring, preserving, and sustaining access to at-risk repositories and data resources.
Initial areas of focus include methods for identifying repositories vulnerable to data loss, strengthening FAIRness and resilience of preserved datasets, and creating a shared dashboard for monitoring data health across preservation, resilience, usability, and discoverability metrics. The project also aims to outline governance and sustainability models that reduce duplication of effort and define best practices for community stewardship.
An outreach and advocacy framework will support awareness efforts among researchers, funders, policymakers, and the public, including guidance on reporting at-risk datasets and accessing preserved data resources. Insights generated during the project, which runs through September 2026, will also inform COS data infrastructure initiatives connected to the Open Science Framework (OSF) and related transparency work.
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