A new year, a new decade. Since our founding in 2009, DataCite has collaborated closely with the research community to expand our services, increase our membership, and promote an open culture of data sharing. As a global leader in the field of research data, we embrace the opportunity to further develop and promote the research infrastructure of the future by engaging with our members, taking a multidisciplinary approach to research data, and cultivating the technical expertise to deliver services that benefit the entire research community.!
As a community driven organisation, our mission is to be the world’s leading provider of persistent identifiers for research. Our vision is to connect research and identify knowledge through providing the means to create, find, cite, connect, and use research.
As we begin 2020, we align with our Strategic Plan, established through an iterative process with input from our Executive Board, DataCite members, the Sustainability and Business Steering Group, emerging community initiatives, and current and near-term funded activities. Building on this plan, we have developed operational strategic priorities and objectives for 2020. The strategy cascades through three different levels:
- Our DataCite Strategic Plan: 2018-2021 provides the blueprint for achieving our vision and mission by aligning the needs of the DataCite community with five goals that we established through an iterative process.
- Our DataCite Vision 2020 defines the strategic priorities and goals for the year ahead, these were the outcomes of our full team meeting last year and we plan to go through the process annually.
- Our DataCite 2020 Objectives form the basis for our individual goals linked to the overall organisation vision and defined from the annual strategic priorities.
As we focus on open communication this year [@https://doi.org/10.5438/sqpf-9g08], it is important that we share our plans with the community. During 2020, we have defined four (4) operational strategic priorities:
- Formalising the new business model. As a membership organization, members are at the core of everything we do and it is important that we are collectively able to work on DataCite’s strategy and long term sustainability.
- Optimising internal operations, systems and processes. Improving our internal systems to ensure that we continue to scale optimally and can support our growing community.
- Consolidation of services and infrastructure. Make our services easier to use for members, and easier to maintain for staff, by continuing the consolidation towards a single foundational API, and a single web interface.
- Continuation of member driven product development. As a community driven organisation, we continue to improve our processes and decisions. This means that all decisions we make about our services and infrastructure are driven by community input and validation.
We continue to expand the opportunities to engage regularly as a community [@https://doi.org/10.5438/sqpf-9g08]. As such, we have planned several meetings to ensure that we will have opportunities for us to meet and discuss important matters (both virtually and in-person):
- Annual Member Meeting (October 23). This year, we will be collocating our annual member meeting with Force2020 in San Sebastian, Spain. Our annual member meeting focuses on DataCite strategy and community outreach. As a community, we will share best practices, discuss common themes and define priorities for DataCite’s future.
- Business Meeting and Board Elections (April 30). As we are a growing global community of 180 members across 40 countries, this year we will be hosting the Business Meeting of the General Assembly virtually to include as many members of our community as possible. The meeting will be focused on approving the budget, voting on any statues changes, approving the next steps on the business model, Executive Board elections etc. Information for voting will be sent out prior to ensure all members are informed of content and process.
- Additional Community Meetings (February 5). Throughout the year, we will conduct additional in-person meetings as needed. Following feedback from the community, we have scheduled the first of these in Amsterdam on February 5 to focus on the new membership model and strategic discussions necessary prior to our Business Meeting. The agenda is still fluid so please identify which topics are of interest in the registration link above. If you cannot make this date/location, please let us know and we can also schedule additional calls to discuss this topic virtually. Additional Community Meetings be planned in the future (dates TBD).
- Open Hours (Monthly). Each month, DataCite staff conduct a virtual Open Hours to discuss key initiatives and strategic goals. All members are welcome to attend and this is a great way for all members to stay connected and informed in organizational priorities. Please let us know if you are not already on the monthly calendar invite and we will add you.
In addition, our roadmap and information about the ongoing implementations are published online https://datacite.org/roadmap.html. Please continue to provide feedback and share ideas.
We are excited for the year ahead and proud of the community that we have become! I look forward to the next 10 years as we grow from strength to strength.
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