COdata

CODATA, the Committee on Data of the International Science Council, is an international, non-governmental organization that coordinates efforts to improve the collection, curation, and use of scientific data. It seeks to enhance data availability, quality, and interoperability across disciplines by promoting standards, best practices, and international collaboration among researchers, data centers, publishers, and funders.

Origin and scope: Established in 1966 by the International Council of Scientific Unions, CODATA operates within the current International Science Council framework. It brings together scientists and data professionals to develop and promote data standards, metadata schemas, data citation conventions, and long-term preservation strategies that support reproducible science across fields.

Activities and outputs: CODATA organizes international task groups and publishes guidelines, reports, and standards that address data management, interoperability, and data sharing. A prominent output is the CODATA Recommended Values of the Fundamental Physical Constants, issued periodically and used worldwide as the authoritative values for key constants such as the Planck constant, elementary charge, and electron mass. CODATA also develops best-practice recommendations for data citation, metadata, and preservation, and helps build capacity for scientific data stewardship.

Governance and impact: CODATA is governed by an international steering body composed of representatives from member communities and is administered by a secretariat within the ISC framework. Through its outputs and collaborations, CODATA supports cross-disciplinary data interoperability, reproducibility, and the wise stewarding of scientific data for current and future research.