Simon Hodson

Simon is an expert on data policy issues and research data management. He has contributed to influential reports on Current Best Practice for Research Data Management Policies and to the Science International Accord on Open Data in a Big Data World.  He chaired the European Commission’s Expert Group on FAIR Data which produced the report Turning FAIR into Reality (https://doi.org/10.2777/1524). He was also vice-chair of the UNESCO Open Science Advisory Committee, with an influential role in drafting the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, which was adopted in November 2021.

As a significant part of his CODATA role, Simon is tasked with preparing a major ISC and CODATA Decadal Programme on ‘Making Data Work for Cross-Domain Grand Challenges’, which will improve the coordination of specifications for data integration and interoperability for interdisciplinary research.  Simon also contributes to the coordination of the CODATA Data Policy Committee.

Additionally, Simon leads or participants in numerous projects, Working Groups and Steering Groups. In recent years, Simon has been a co-chair (2015-2018) of the GEO Data Sharing Working Group, to which CODATA has made a long-term contribution; co-chair of the OECD Global Science Forum and CODATA Project on Sustainable Business Models for Research Data Repositories; a member of the Board of Directors of the Dryad Data Repository (2012-2018), a not-for-profit initiative to make the data underlying scientific publications discoverable, freely reusable, and citable; Project Director, African Open Science Platform Project (2016-19); and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of CESSDA ERIC, the European data infrastructure for the social sciences.

Simon has a strong research background, as well as considerable project and programme management experience: from 2009 to 2013, as Programme Manager, he led two successful phases of Jisc’s innovative Managing Research Data programme in the UK.