Building Responsible and Sustainable Open Data Literacy Skills for Early Career Researchers: A Decade of the SoRDS Programme
Published in Data Science Journal, 2026
This paper presents a retrospective synthesis of the Schools of Research Data Science (SoRDS) initiative, established in 2016 through a partnership between CODATA and the Research Data Alliance (RDA). The programme was created to provide foundational data science skills to early-career researchers from low- and middle-income countries, integrating technical instruction with principles of data ethics, reproducibility, data stewardship, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
A distinctive feature of SoRDS is its Train-the-Trainer approach, which empowers participants to become regional instructors themselves, building sustainable communities of practice rather than relying on one-off training events. The programme also employs an “RDM in context” methodology, tailoring research data management content to the realities of resource-constrained settings rather than importing generic curricula.
The paper documents the initiative’s decade-long evolution, its global growth across regions, its pedagogical framework, and the practical lessons learned along the way. It offers guidance for advancing research data management training in underserved research communities, drawing on ten years of programme delivery and iteration.
This work reflects a sustained, collaborative effort among researchers and practitioners involved in CODATA and RDA capacity-building activities, aimed at making responsible and open data practices accessible to researchers who have historically had limited access to formal data science training.
Recommended citation: Gandhi, S., Diggs, S., Alfaro Córdoba, M., Bezuidenhout, L., Cobe, R., El Jadid, S., Peterson, B., Quick, R., Shanahan, H., Venkataraman, S., Okorafor, E., & Van den Eynden, V. (2026). "Building Responsible and Sustainable Open Data Literacy Skills for Early Career Researchers: A Decade of the SoRDS Programme." Data Science Journal, 25(1), 12. DOI: 10.5334/dsj-2026-012
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