Health Research Data: News and Events

March 2022

• NASA’s Science Mission Directorate announced its new open-access policies across divisions and proposed steps to share data and software more quickly and thoroughly.
• PLOS has launched a new experimental open science feature intended to promote data sharing and reuse across the journal portfolio. This will help researchers find accessible data, and encourage best practice in data sharing.
• The International Energy Agency (IEA) will be discussing its intention to remove the paywall to its comprehensive energy datasets in the upcoming biennial ministerial meeting on March 23rd and urge member countries to fully commit to open data going forward.
• The Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance) Research Intelligence Expert Group (RIEG) has launched a survey regarding the development of institutional research data management (RDM) strategies inviting to participate all Canadian research institutions receiving research grant funds from Canada’s federal research funding agencies.
• Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) will be hosting its annual meeting from May 17 to 20 focusing on initiatives to connect, modernize, and innovate repositories and their networks.
• Bookings are officially open for the UCL Open Science Conference 2022 being held online on April 6th and 7th. Tickets are free and open to everyone interested.

February 2022

• Researchers from San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego have laid out a set of new practices to guide the curation of high energy physics datasets that make them more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).
• FAIRsFAIR has released its guidance document for making more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) Data Management Plans based on Science Europe's Practical Guide to the International Alignment of Research Data Management.
• FORCE11 has set February 14 as the deadline for submitting a course proposal for the FSCI2022 conference which will be held from July 25th – 29th discussing scholarly communication issues in research, dissemination and publishing.
• Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries announced the call for proposals for the 17th International Conference on Open Repositories, taking place as an in-person conference on 6th to 9th of June in Denver, Colorado, USA.
• University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries hosted an online session on the Open Science Framework at Oxford and how it fits into the wider Research Data Management ecosystem.

January 2022

• KU Leuven has launched a new platform for archiving and publishing research data. Research Data Repository (RDR) makes it possible for researchers to keep their data safe for years while making it accessible to fellow researchers worldwide.
• The Digital Curation Centre will be holding a series of drop-in sessions providing updates on their recent work and offering the community the opportunity to discuss research data management practices at their institutions. Sessions will also be recorded for those who cannot attend the live events.
• The non-profit firm OurResearch has launched OpenAlex, a free index of more than 200 million scientific documents that catalogues publication sources, author information and research topic, creating a comprehensive, interlinked database of the global research system.

December 2021

• Nature Methods has released a new set of guidelines to improve the reporting, reproducibility and access to microscopy metadata.
• Following a £45m grant from UK Research and Innovation, the European Bioinformatics Institute is launching a hybrid, multicloud strategy to offer data and analysis to scientists around the world.
• The Ontario Brain Institute released their third set of clinical data on dementia through the open science data platform Brain-CODE further accelerating brain research, discovery, and innovation.
• A new report that examines the effectiveness of initiatives taken by players in the research ecosystem found that levels of COVID-19 research data sharing have remained low during the pandemic.
• Paris Open Science European Conference (OSEC) will be held online on February 4th and February 5th, 2022. The main topics addressed during this conference come within the framework of the transformation of the research and innovation ecosystem in Europe.

July – August 2021

• The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) released new data exploring how the pandemic has impacted Canada’s healthcare system.
• Fanshawe College and NDRIO-Portage have released a Beta version of a toolkit to support colleges, universities and other research institutions in designing and delivering Research Data Management (RDM) workshops.
• The New Digital Research Infrastructure Organization has pre-announced their inaugural funding opportunity, which will support the development of national digital research capacity.

June 2021

• The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) released new data for two pan-Canadian indicators: Wait Times for Community Mental Health Counselling and Wait Times for Home Care Services.
• The Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS) is hosting their annual conference online from June 7 – 10. This year's CAIS conference theme is "Northern Relations: Connecting the Unexpected and Overlooked to Information Science".
• As part of the seminar series for societies and communities, on June 4 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) are hosting a webinar to discuss aligning funder data sharing policy with support from academic societies.

May 2021

• From May 4 to 7, the New Digital Research Infrastructure Organization (NDRIO) is hosting a series of Virtual Town Hall events as the latest consultation step in the Canadian Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) Needs Assessment.
• NDRIO and the CARL-Portage group announced the availability of CAD $336,000 in funding to support the curation of Canadian research data related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The CARL-Portage group has published eight new discipline- and methodology-specific Data Management Plans (DMPs) Templates, available in English and French.
• The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine hosted a two-day virtual workshop April 28-29 exploring challenges & opportunities in establishing effective data management and sharing practices. A recording will be available for viewing after the workshop.
• The GO FAIR Initiative is hosting the 2021 FAIR festival June 21-23, which will connect various stakeholders in the research community to discuss their experiences and strategies in advancing FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) research data management.

April 2021

• The Government of Canada announced a $9.6 million investment in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), in order to renew the infrastructure of the CLSA research platform.
• CRKN, CARL-Portage, and Research Data Canada are hosting a 6-part webinar series about persistent identifiers (PIDs) called: The Who, What, and Where of Persistent Identifiers. The series will run from March 3 to May 15.
• A new seminar series for societies and the communities will provide information and resources to enable data sharing in research communities. The seminars take place on the first Friday of each month until the end of the year.

March 2021

• The CARL-Portage network has announced that their DMP Assistant 2.0 will be launching in March 2021. The DMP Assistant is a bilingual tool that assists researchers in building DMPs for their work.
• The CARL-Portage network has published new DMP Brief Guides and Primers to assist researchers who are new to creating data management plans.
• The Health Data Research Network Canada (HDRN Canada) and the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) announced a new partnership to enable linkage of the CLSA cohort data with data held at provincial data centres.
• The 4th National Data Services Framework (NDSF) Summit, hosted by Research Data Canada, is taking place from March 8 – 10. The theme of this year's Summit is "Crafting the Canadian Open Research Commons".

February 2021

• Love Data Week took place from February 8 – 12, with a number of Canadian institutions taking part. Next year's event will take place February 14-18, 2022.
• The Office of Indigenous Initiatives at Wilfrid Laurier University held a symposium on Indigenous Data Sovereignty on February 10.
• The Portage Network held introductory webinars on the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR), a data repository available to researchers for data storage, curation, preservation, discovery, and more.

January 2021

• The Portage network hosted a webinar on challenges and opportunities in research data management training at Canadian institutions.
• On January 27, the International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST) hosted a webinar on Indigenous data sovereignty and ethics.
• Health Data Research Network Canada (HDRN Canada) hosted an informational webinar for members of the public to learn more about the organization and its initiatives.

December 2020

• Research Data Canada (RDC) will be hosting the last webinar in their Data Ownership webinar series on December 10, called “The Open Science and Open Data Context”. Click here to register.
• CARL Portage and the Scholars Portal Dataverse at the University of Toronto Libraries have announced that they acquired over 275 TB of additional research data storage capacity for use by Canadian libraries. Learn more.
• CARL Portage has published six new data management plan (DMP) examples, available in French and English, covering a variety of research disciplines. These examples can be used to guide researchers in developing their own DMPs. Find them on the Portage Training Resources website.

November 2020

• On November 11 to 12, the Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) and the Gairdner Foundation are hosting the second edition of the Neuro Open Science in Action Symposium. This virtual two-day symposium will bring together global leaders in Open Science including researchers, patient advocates, policy-makers, funders, industry, philanthropic organizations, and science communicators for critical exchange via lectures, panel discussions, workshops, and networking events. 
• On November 9 to 12 the 16th Plenary meeting of the Research Data Alliance will take place with the theme "Knowledge Ecology." The event is co-organised by CONARE Costa Rica, RDA United States and Research Data Canada.  
• On November 27 to December 4 the International FAIR Convergence Symposium will take place as a fully virtual event, providing a unique forum for advancing international and cross-domain convergence around FAIR. The two internationally recognized organizations will convene a global community with an interest in combining data across domains for a host of research issues – including major global challenges, such as those relating to the SDGs or the COVID-19 pandemic. Outcomes will directly inform the CODATA Decadal Programme ‘Making data work for cross-domain grand challenges’ and the GO FAIR community’s convergence towards bottom-up development of the Internet of FAIR data and services globally.
• Research Data Canada - Five-Part Webinar Series on Data Ownership (Part 3 - The Academic Post-Secondary Context – November 5, Part 4 - Standards and Protocols - November 26)

October 2020

• On October 8, Research Data Canada hosted a webinar to provide a summary and the outputs of the National Data and Framework (NDSF) Summit. Click on the following link to view a video of the presentation.
• Research Data Canada - Five-Part Webinar Series on Data Ownership (Part 1 - Data Ownership Writ Large - October 15, Part 2 - Indigenous Data Ownership - October 22)
• Portage has released a new video for the series: Get Started with FRDR. In this video, you will learn how to download Globus Connect Personal to your computer. Watch the video on CARL’s YouTube channel: Download and Install Globus Connect Personal

March 2020

• The Roadmap for Open Science has been announced by Minister Navdeep Bains and Dr. Mona Nemer. The final version has been published on the website of the Office of the Chief Science Advisor.
• The Max Planck Digital Library is hosting Open Science Days 2020 in Berlin, Germany.
• The Open Science Conference 2020, the 7th international conference of the Leibniz Research Alliance Open Science, is being held Berlin, Germany.
• The FIT4RRI consortium is holding the RRI for Real: Shaping the future of open science and society relations summit in Rome, Italy.
• The Software Sustainability Institute’s Collaborations Workshop series brings together researchers, developers, innovators, managers, funders, publishers, leaders and educators to explore best practices and the future of research software. Collaborations Workshop 2020 (CW20) is taking place at Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland. The themes of CW20 are: Open Research, Data Privacy and Software Sustainability.

February 2020

• The Government of Canada has launched the Canadian 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Rapid Research Funding Opportunity (Application deadline : February 18, 2020). This is a collaboration between the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the International Development Research Centre, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Data produced as a result of this funding must be shared in line with the Joint statement on sharing research data and findings relevant to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
• RDC is holding a National Data Services Framework (NDSF) Summit 2020 at the Brookstreet Hotel in Ottawa. They are also conducting two webinars: Ethical Digital Data Management: A Toolkit on February 13, 2020, and The Persistent Identifiers (PID) Graph and its Potential: Extending Persistent Identifiers for Research Data on February 27, 2020.
• For the first time, the Health Datapalooza will take place in February and be co-located with the AcademyHealth National Health Policy Conference (NHPC) in Washington, D.C. The 2020 Health Datapalooza will feature the same great plenaries, breakouts, awards, and unconference sessions.
• The 2nd Blockchain in Healthcare Congress is being held in London, UK for people who have broad knowledge on and interest about blockchain, bitcoin, healthcare, distributed system, data storage and management.
• Stanford University will be hosting a one-day technical conference, Women in Data Science, on March 2, 2020. The conference is sold out, but you may watch the event live or attend a WiDS regional event in your area (Canadian locations available).
• The RDA 15th Plenary Meeting – with the theme, Data for Real-World Impact will be held March 18-20, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia.
• Hosted by the Institute for Data Science, Data Day, to be held on March 31, 2020, is an annual conference that celebrates the latest developments in data science and analytics research within Carleton University, the local community, and Canada.

January 2020

• The University of Oslo Library held the Research Bazaar 2020: Research data for everyone event.
• The Canadian Association of Research Libraries, along with sponsor BCcampus, are holding an Open Education Leadership Essentials Event (OeLE) in Toronto. 
• The ASAPbio January 2020 workshop: A Roadmap for Transparent and FAIR Preprints in Biology and Medicine was held in Hinxton, UK.
• MgGill University hosted the CSCDS Data Science Expo 2020.
• An event at the Inspire School regarding Analysing and Interpreting Research Data is being held in Mawsley, UK.
• The Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values is holding a symposium about uses of health data at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

December 2019

• The Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy public consultation summary was published.
• The Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR) hosted Hacking AMR 2019 – Using the Digital World to Fight Antimicrobial Resistance in Stockholm, Sweden.
• The McGill Faculty of Medicine Med e-News released Five Insights on Open Access and Predatory Publishing.

November 2019

• UNESCO Member States have tasked the Organization with leading a global dialogue on Open Science, to identify globally-agreed norms and to create a standard-setting instrument.
• Sharing datasets that reveal the function of genomic variants in health and disease has become easier, with the launch of a new, open-source database developed by researchers from Australia, the United States and Canada.
• The Canadian Association of Research Libraries released a statement on open education.
• Canada’s three federal granting agencies agreed to partner with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries on a pilot project which seeks to use the OpenAIRE service to improve the discoverability of Canadian open access content.
• The Open Science in Action: Inaugural Symposium was held at the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital.

October 2019

• CIHR is pleased to announce the launch of a Other: SPOR SUPPORT Unit Phase II funding opportunity, with the application deadline of May 4, 2020.
• An article in a recent issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal discusses the CIHR-funded SPOR Canadian Data Platform.
• Portage, Compute Canada (CC) and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) are collaborating to provide a scalable federated platform for digital research data management (RDM) and discovery.
• Data Tree, funded by the UK research council, has launched a free online course with all you need to know for research data management, along with ways to engage and share data with business, policymakers, media and the wider public.
• Portage has recently published new training aids for research data management: Research Data Management (RDM) 101 is an online training module, and Data Curation, Dataverse and FRDR have been added to the “Good Enough” 1 pager series. All the new aids are also available in French.
• The Research Data Management Librarian Academy (RDMLA) is a free online professional development program for librarians, information professionals, or other professionals who work in a research-intensive environment throughout the world.

September 2019

• The Research Data Alliance’s 14th Plenary will take place on October-23-25 in Helsinki, Finland. It brings together data experts in research, industry and policy-making from all around the world and from all disciplines under the theme Data Makes the Difference.
• The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) will host its 2019 conference on access to knowledge on October 16-18. Registration is now sold out and interested participants can live-stream the Transforming Scholarly Communications workshop on October 17th 10AM-5PM ET by emailing fbrzezicki@crkn.ca
• The Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship (FORCE11) will host its annual meeting at the University of Edinburgh on October 16-17. Registration is now open.
• The Shared Stewardship of Research Data is calling for interested participants to join the Portage Training Expert Group (TEG), which aims to develop a web-based basic training module for learning about RDM institutional strategies.

August 2019

• In response to the draft of the Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy, the Portage Research Intelligence Expert Group (RIEG) is conducting a survey of all Canadian research institutions to determine existing services and capacity to support Research Data Management (RDM). The survey will remain open until September 30, 2019.
• Early bird registration for the National Data Services Framework (NDSF) Summit 2019 is now open.

July 2019

• CIHR has launched an operating grant for the data analysis using existing databases and cohort. Application deadline is October 10, 2019.
• The three Canadian federal research funding agencies and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) are pleased to announce the launch of the Canada-UK Artificial Intelligence Initiative. The call for proposals was launched on June 21, 2019.
• The CIHR Healthy Cities Research Initiative (HCRI) is pleased to announce an upcoming new funding opportunity: Data Analysis Using Existing Databases and Cohorts. The intent of this funding opportunity is to highlight and encourage the use of previously funded cohort, administrative, and survey data.
• Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics in Toronto hospital is using AI data science to understand mental health.
• University of Windsor hosted the grand opening of its new science facility, the Essex Centre of Research (Essex CORe). This large, state of the art open concept lab fosters innovative ideas through conversation and collaboration.

June 2019

• The Saskatchewan government has announced a partnership with the University of Regina and Statistics Canada to open the Regina Research Data Centre (RRDC), which will provide researchers with access to population, household services, and health data.
• The Brain Tumour Registry of Canada launched in May, which collaborates with existing provincial and territorial cancer registries to collect data on all primary brain tumours and make this information available to the research community.
• The Government of Canada released Canada’s Digital Charter, which addresses a number of areas related to data governance, accessibility, and security.

May 2019

• The Canadian Research Software Conference will be held in Montreal on May 28th and the 29th. One of the conference’s priorities will be the development of open source software to support research.
• Machine M.D.: The Law, Policy and Ethics of Tomorrow’s AI and Big Data in Healthcare Conference will be held at the University of Ottawa from Friday May 31st to Saturday June 1st 2019.
• The CIHR-funded Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research Canadian Data Platform is expected to launch in the next two or three months with the hopes of providing a single portal through which researchers can request and access health data from various sources from across the country and share analytical tools.
• The Digital Research Infrastructure Strategy includes a new contribution program, managed by ISED, to fund one eligible not-for-profit corporation to coordinate and fund activities in Advanced Research Computing, Data Management, and Research Software.

April 2019

• The University of Western Ontario was awarded $2.1 million in funding to investigate how artificial intelligence can be used to assist in identifying treatment options for patients diagnosed with psychosis.
• Dalhousie University Researcher Penny Corkum will be discussing how Big Data can inform and inspire ideas to optimize family well-being in Canada, particularly when it comes to sleep.
• Health Canada announced that it will begin releasing clinical trial data for new drugs and medical devices on its new Clinical Information Portal.
• An international study led by the University of Toronto has found mobile health apps for consumers and clinicians pose a risk to patients’ privacy. The research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Sydney Policy Lab.
• Two of Canada’s pioneers in artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto and Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, have claimed this year’s Turning Award. The Turing Award is bestowed annually by the New York-based Association for Computing Machinery, world’s top prize in computer science.
• Philadelphia will be hosting The Research Data Alliance’s 13th Plenary Meeting from April 2nd – 4th. The theme of the conference will be “With Data Comes Responsibility”, with hopes of facilitating important dialogue within the international community.
• Dr. Bartha Knoppers, Canada Research Chair in Law and Medicine, has been awarded the 2019 Henry G. Friesen International Prize in Health Research for her work that covers ethics and law, as applied to health research policy, stem cell research, human gene editing, biobanking and global genomic data sharing.

March 2019

• CIHR-IPPH launched a planning grant on Equitable AI to support the planning of activities or events related to the development of research partnerships, teams and/or grant applications for research projects exploring the use of AI approaches to answer public health questions.
• The EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) and CIHR have launched an operating grant that supports research on data related to diagnosis, prevention, and care. Pre-proposals to JPND are due March 12, 2019.
• The new Common Infrastructure for National Cohorts in Europe, Canada and Africa (CINECA) was launched, providing researchers with quick access to collective data.
• The CARL-Portage Training Expert Group has released a number of new research data management training resources, including a Research Data Management (RDM) 101 training module.
• The Government of Canada and partners have invested $255 million in genomics and precision health research.
• Statistics Canada is conducting the 2021 Census of Population Program Consultation which will be open until March 31, 2019.
• The Machine M.D conference on artificial intelligence, big data, and healthcare is taking place on May 31st-June 1st 2019 at the University of Ottawa.
• SickKids announced Anna Golderberg as their first-ever chair in biomedical informatics and artificial intelligence.

February 2019

• Pre-Announcement: Call for Proposals 2019 of the EU Joint Programme - Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND).
• Wellcome Trust announced increased support for the Research Data Alliance’s (RDA) efforts to promote open research.
• As part of the Spring Project Grant competition, The Knowledge Translation Strategies team at CIHR we will be offering up to $600,000 in supplemental funding to applicants proposing research projects in areas related to data science, management and stewardship.
• CIHR-INMHA, in partnership with the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment (CIPSRT), have launched a Mental Wellness in Public Safety Team Grant with relevant data analytics projects as one of the strategic priority themes.
• RDC hosted a webinar on new RDM Capacity Building Initiatives with presenters from CIHR and SSHRC (watch the archived webinar or download the slides).
• CIHR has launched an I-HeLTI team grant that aims to develop research data management practices as one of the objectives.
• As a pre-event to the 13th RDA plenary, Drexel Metadata Research Centre and CODATA are holding a workshop from March 31st to April 1st 2019 on FAIR and Responsible Research Data Management (FAIR-RRDM). Register or apply for the call for papers by Feb 18, 2019!

January 2019

• The Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) opened its national headquarters located at Simon Fraser University’s Big Data Hub.
• Research Data Canada will be hosting the National Data Services Framework Summit January 24-25 in Ottawa.
• The Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (IHSPR) has recently announced the third launch of The Health System Impact (HSI) Fellowship program. A total of $4,716,500 has been made available through this funding opportunity, of which the Science Policy branch at CIHR has contributed $861,000 to fund 12 awards focusing on critical challenges in the growing field of data science, data management, and/or data stewardship within the health system. An information webinar will be held January 10, 12:00pm - 1:30pm EST.
• Research Data Canada will be hosting a webinar entitled Introduction to new RDM Capacity Building Initiatives on January 8, 2019 at 1:00 PM EST.

December 2018

• CLSA released biochemistry biomarker data from baseline biospecimen collection.
• Canada Health Infoway launched ACCESS 2022, a new movement encouraging access to digital health information and e-services for healthcare providers, patients and families.
• Health Canada released 2017 data from the Canadian Tobacco, Alcohol and Drugs Survey (CTADS).
• IDRC launched a project aimed at improving long-term response and recovery from the Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo using routine health data.
• Health Canada released a summary of data from the Canadian Cannabis Survey 2018.
• The Healthiest Communities Data Challenge is accepting submissions until January 17, 2019!
• The RDA 13th Plenary will be held on April 2-4, 2019 in Philadelphia, US. Submit a session proposal before the January 5, 2019 deadline!

November 2018

• CIHR developed and launched a new Research Data Management Learning Module!
• International Data Week (IDW) is on November 5-8, 2018. Follow CIHR’s social media for IDW updates!
• RDA’s 12th Plenary Meeting will take place in Gaborone, Botswana as part of International Data Week 2018.
• CIHR-IG and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS) are contributing $4.7M to the Canada-EU Data Flagship Collaboration.
• Canada is co-chairing the global Open Government Partnership initiative for a one-year period.
• CANARIE awarded $4.4M to research teams to develop advanced software for adapting existing research platforms for re-use.
• The MaRS Health Opioid Data Challenge is now open. Click here to register!
• CLSA launched new wave of data collection.
• The Health Data for Action 2018 Applicant Webinar will be held on November 9, 2018 1:30-3:00 pm. Click here to register!

October 2018

• International Open Access Week is on October 22-28, 2018. Follow CIHR’s social media for Open Access week updates! #OAweek
• Registration is open for the CLSA Webinar on October 23, 2018: Enriching the CLSA with environmental exposure data: CANUE.
• CLSA released first genomics data for approximately 9,900 participants.
• CANARIE National Summit 2018: Automation Nation is being held on October 2-3rd, 2018.
• Registration is open for Statistics Canada's 2018 International Methodology Symposium, "Combine to Conquer: Innovations in the Use of Multiple Sources of Data” on November 6-9, 2018.

September 2018

• Consultation deadline for feedback on the draft Tri-Agency Research Data Management Draft Policy has been extended to September 30, 2018.
• CIHR launched a competition that aims to facilitate the sharing of microbiome, human health, and disease data and resources.
• Registration is open for the CRDCN 2018 National Conference on October 18 and 19, 2018 in Hamilton, Ontario.
• Google released Dataset Search, a new resource that enables researchers to search for open data repositories and datasets.

August 2018

• Government of Canada released Model Policy on Scientific Integrity with data implications for federal departments and agencies.
• CIHR-IHDCYH supports facilitating data sharing in refreshed strategic plan 2018–2020.
• CIHR launched a competition on data analysis using existing databases and cohorts.
• CIHR launched a competition encouraging data-sharing agreements with communities.
• CIHR’s HIV/AIDS and STBBI Research Initiative launched a competition, which will enable high quality data management and analysis.

July 2018

• Government of Canada launches national consultations on digital and data transformation
• GloPID-R releases Principles of Data Sharing in Public Health Emergencies
• CIHR launches a catalyst grant on the analysis of CLSA Data
• CIHR launches a Personalized Medicine team grant with a focus on data analysis, management and protection

June 2018

• Consultations on the Tri-Agency Research Data Management Draft Policy
• The Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) released its first report on Health and Aging in Canada
• CLSA and the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (CANUE) are collaborating for research!
• The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enforced on May 25, 2018.
• Healthy Behaviour Data Challenge: Announcing five winning teams!

November 2017

• Healthy Behaviour Data Challenge: Phase 1 Finalists. Nine entries have been selected for further development and evaluation in the second phase of the Healthy Behaviour Data Challenge. To read about the work of the nine teams, visit the challenge website.

October 2017

• CIHR’s Science, Knowledge Translation and Ethics Branch (SKTE) is pleased to announce that it will be providing support to Andriy Koval (University of British Columbia) to complete a two-year Health System Impact Fellowship working with the BC Observatory for Population and Public Health, BC Centre for Disease Control, and the BC Provincial Health Services Authority. Dr. Koval’s work is intended to improve the integrity and validity of case definitions for mental health and substance use (MHSU) conditions and build a robust system for surveillance and reporting on these chronic conditions. Congratulations to Dr. Koval!

May 2017

• Compute Canada Webinar: Compute Canada and CIHR invite you to a webinar to learn about the advanced research computing resources and services available to the health research community. Discover how Canadian research teams are leveraging advanced research computing for world-class results and learn how Compute Canada is serving the health research community and how to gain access to their services. June 13th at 2:30 pm (English) and June 15th at 2:30 (French).

April 2017

• The CIHR Science, Knowledge Translation and Ethics Branch (SKTE) and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) are partnering with the US Centers for Disease Control and the US Department of Health and Human Services on a Healthy Behaviour Data Challenge. The objective of the challenge is to identify and use creative new types of data and data sources to enhance public health surveillance of physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep. The challenge is being coordinated by the MaRS Discovery District. For more details, visit the challenge website.
• CIHR’s Science, Knowledge Translation and Ethics Branch (SKTE) is partnering on the Health System Impact Fellowship and will support up to two PhD graduates (post-docs) to complete one-year fellowships. These fellowships will provide highly-qualified individuals with a unique opportunity to apply their research and analytic talents to critical challenges in the growing field of data science, data management, and/or data stewardship within health system and related organizations.
• GloPID-R news: The Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GloPID-R) is an international partnership of research funding organizations that work together to facilitate timely and effective research responses to significant outbreaks of new or re-emerging infectious diseases with pandemic potential. In pursuit of its mission to support the development of rapid and coordinated responses to outbreaks, the GloPID-R data sharing working group is developing its Principles for Data Sharing in Public Health Emergencies. These draft principles, shared on March 30, 2017, are available for comment until May 2, 2017.
  
• E-Rare Workshop on Data sharing and harmonization: E-Rare is organizing a workshop on data sharing and harmonization in order to promote those issues in the rare disease research community. The workshop will take place on the 4th of May in Berlin, Germany at the Ramada hotel and will be preceded by a poster session in the late afternoon of the 3rd of May. This workshop will be organized back to back to the RD-Connect, NeurOmics and EURenOmics meeting. Registration is open until April 7th, 2017. The number of places is limited and priority will be given to E-Rare funded projects. More information is available.

March 2017

• Health Datapalooza brings together a diverse audience of over 1,600 people from the public and private sectors to learn how health and health care can be improved by harnessing the power of data. The conference brings data to life in ways that matter in health and health care. Each year, the meeting serves as a trusted gathering place for thought leaders and innovators that build momentum toward a vibrant health information economy. This year's conference promises to bring new energy to an action-packed event featuring top speakers representing a variety of industries.
  Health Datapalooza takes place April 27-28, 2017 at the Washington Hilton, in Washington D.C.

February 2017

• Data Day - Stories Data Tells - The Toronto Research Data Centre (RDC) is organizing the first annual Data Day: Stories Data Tell on April 27, 2017. The event will feature a keynote address by Dr. Valerie Tarasuk, who holds Programmatic Grants in Health and Health Equity funded by the CIHR Institute of Population and Public Health. Data Day is an opportunity for RDC researchers to present their research and data findings in a relaxed, collegial environment. Data Day is open to the public and will occur at Robarts Library, 130 St. George Street, in the Robert H. Blackburn Room, room 4036. Registration is now open.
• The 2017 Microbiome Summer School: Big Data Analytics for Omics Science - CIHR-CBW-CERC-BDRC -  Partners and sponsors include Calcul Québec, the Canada Excellence Research Chair on microbiome, Université Laval, as well as multiple CIHR Institutes such as the Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes, the Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis, the Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health, the Institute of Genetics and the Institute of Infection and Immunity.
  The Microbiome Summer School will provide an introduction to the use of bioinformatics in microbiome reseasummer schoolrelated big data analytics. The summer school is targeted towards graduates, postgraduates, staff bioinformaticians, lab managers, and early to mid-career investigators and will take place from June 18- 22nd, 2017 in Quebec City, Quebec.
• Research Data Management Guidelines and Policies - Jessica Mankowski (Acting Manager, CIHR KT Strategy Unit)and Mark Leggott (Executive Director, Research Data Canada) will be presenting a webinar entitled Research Data Management Guidelines and Policies on February 22, 2017 14:00-15:00 (EST). The speakers will discuss the principles of research data management and highlight the recent Tri-Agency Statement of Principles on Digital Data Management. Registration is now open.
• Love Your Data Week (LYD) – Research data specialists will be celebrating Love Your Data week from February 13-17 this year. The 5-day international social media event is meant to help researchers take better care of their data by raising awareness and building a community to engage on topics related to research data management, sharing, preservation, reuse, and library-based research data services. The theme for 2017 is emphasizing data quality for researchers at any stage in their career. The LYD team will share practical tips, resources, and stories to help researchers at any stage in their career use good data practices. Visit the LYD webpage to learn more.

January 2017

• Beall's List of Predatory Open Access Publishers – For the past seven years, Jeffrey Beall, an Associate Professor and librarian at the University of Colorado, has released his 2017 List of Predatory Publishers. The list includes fake and low- quality online science journals, with hundreds of new entries carrying Canadian names.
• Research Data Centre Program: request for proposals - Statistics Canada, together with the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), is launching a pilot project that will provide access to the 2006 Census linked to the Discharge Abstract Database (DAD) for 2006/07 - 2008/09. The 2006 Census was linked to the DAD for 2006/07- 2008/09 to support analysis of hospital use by sub-populations and socio-economic status of Canadians. Interested researchers are invited to submit a proposal by January 31, 2017. More details about the pilot and on how to submit a proposal are available here [ PDF (114 KB) - external link ].

December 2016

• Research Data Canada – CIHR staff have published a guest blog on the Research Data Canada (RDC) website. The piece, entitled Maximizing Health Research Data Benefits in Public Health Emergencies: A Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Perspective, discusses the need to balance timely access to data with ethical, legal and social considerations during public health emergencies. RDC works with stakeholders to ensure research data is available to support innovation that benefits all Canadians.
• Canadian Institute of Health Research - Institute of Genetics – A new 2017 funding opportunity, The Summer Studentship Health research award for Undergraduate Students in Computational Biology, has been launched by CIHR – Institute of Genetics for undergraduate students in life sciences, mathematics, and computer sciences. Program is now launched; application deadline is January 17th, 2017.
• Compute Canada – Led by Compute Canada, the fastest, long-distance, academic data transfer, known in Canada, was successfully demonstrated at the SC16, the world's largest supercomputing conference.
• Research Data Canada – RDC announces that it is launching the Best Practices Series with Unique Identifiers: Current Landscape and Future Trends.

November 2016

• UBC Library Contributes Search Interface to Federated Research Data Repository – Portage and Compute Canada have partnered with the University of British Columbia Library in adopting their UBC Open Collections user interface. This search tool has been selected as the discovery interface for the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR) software being developed by Compute Canada and Portage. Among the features of the repository is a federated framework to allow the research data in Canadian data repositories to be discovered from a single, coherent search engine. For more information, please visit the Portage webpage.

• Digital Health Week – A Conversation with Canadians (November 14-20) - During Digital Health Week, join the Better Health Together community of Supporting Organizations for a conversation about digital health. For more information on events and registration please visit the Better Health Together webpage.

• Open Data Science Symposium: How Open Data and Open Science are Transforming Biomedical Research – The Open Data Science Symposium is on December 1, 2016, at 8:30-4:00 p.m. The Symposium is open to the public and will be available through a webcast. Registration is free and open until November 18, 2016.

• Call for Proposals for the CHMS Biobank – From November 1 to December 31, 2016 Statistics Canada is inviting researchers to apply for access to blood, urine and DNA samples from the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) Biobank for use in health studies. The biospecimens are available to any Canadian researcher who completes a review process and would benefit from a national population survey of approximately 5,600 participants per collection cycle. The CHMS is a Statistics Canada survey designed to collect valuable information about the health of Canadians. For more information about the application, review process and biospecimen availability visit the CHMS website.

• International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC) major coordinated paper release – An international collection of 41 coordinated papers was released in several high-impact publications, including Cell and Cell Press-associated journals. Seven included manuscripts were led, or received significant contributions from the Canadian Epigenetics, Environment and Health Research Consortium. For more information, please see the IHEC News Release or Cell. In addition, the IHEC Data Portal has been updated with new functionality, more datasets and dedicated portal sessions for a number of the papers. Over 7,400 datasets are now on the portal, representing over 2,100 human reference epigenomes from across the consortium!

Date modified:

2022-05-06