21 September 2026
AGU press contact:
Josh Weinberg, (202) 820-6064, [email protected]
WASHINGTON — Scientific datasets should be recognized as foundational for research ecosystems and society: long-lived resources that fuel the research ecosystem, support decisions in communities and governments and help society respond to global challenges such as climate change and natural hazards, argues a new commentary in AGU Advances.
The commentary, “Impactful Datasets in Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences: Highlighting the Data that Transform Research,” launches AGU’s new special collection of data papers, Impactful Datasets in Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences, hosted by AGU’s journal Earth and Space Science. The collection provides an opportunity to celebrate and highlight the people, methods, and ongoing dedication necessary to ensure the best possible data are available and ready for use.
The special collection arrives at a moment when data infrastructure and the people who sustain them face new pressures, the commentary notes.
“This special collection comes at a time when research data infrastructures are losing sustainable funding globally,” said co-author Graziella Caprarelli, who is also editor-in-chief of Earth and Space Science. “Highlighting both the datasets and the data experts who ensure usability and quality helps researchers and policy makers understand the value and complexity of these critical assets.”
The authors argue that Earth, space, and environmental science datasets are part of a shared world heritage, reflecting AGU’s long-standing commitment to open and accessible science. AGU’s position statement on data calls for equitable access to data and infrastructure, recognition of data contributions, and common standards that make data easier to find, understand and reuse across disciplines — so that researchers, decision-makers and the public can build on reliable evidence and make informed decisions about a dataset’s applicability.
This special collection highlights the valuable and impactful data described in the aspirations of that position statement as well as the real-time needs of the global research community. It invites data stewards, researchers, and practitioners to submit technical data papers recognizing the teams behind datasets that have advanced scientific discovery and societal benefit.
The new special collection follows an effort initiated in 2025 to encourage the AGU community to nominate impactful datasets. During the first nomination window between July and October 2025, 164 nominations were submitted, representing 133 unique datasets. The accepted nominations are included in the dataset titled “Impactful Datasets in Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences.” The nominators are included as co-authors of the commentary.
“Geoscience today benefits from an ever-growing wealth of open datasets that offer unprecedented insights into the Earth system,” said co-author Alberto Montanari, who is also editor-in-chief of AGU Advances. “AGU is committed to ensuring that these data are visible, accessible, and readily usable by the global research community. We are confident that they will fuel remarkable discoveries in the years ahead, advancing knowledge and benefiting humanity as a whole.”
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Notes for journalists:
This commentary is published in AGU Advances, an open access journal. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2026AV002623
Explore the full “Impactful Datasets in Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences” collection in AGU’s journal Earth and Space Science or nominate a dataset at: https://www.agu.org/impactful-datasets/
Paper title:
“Impactful Datasets in Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences: Highlighting the Data that Transform Research”
Authors:
- Joseph Gum, Independent researcher, San Diego, CA, USA.
- Graziella Caprarelli, Centre for Astrophysics, University of Southern Queensland, Australia.
- Alberto Montanari, Dept DICAM, University of Bologna, Italy.
- Brian Sedora, American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC, USA.
- Shelley Stall, American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC, USA.
- Mathew Biddle, NOAA United States Integrated Ocean Observing System, Silver Spring, MD, USA.
- Rachael Blake, Intertidal Agency, Berkeley, CA, USA.
- Matt Jones, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
- Elizabeth Joyner, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, USA.
- Binita KC, ADNET Systems, Inc.
- Doug Newman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
- Doug Schuster, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO, USA.
- Andrea K. Thomer, University of Arizona College of Information Science, Tucson, AZ, USA.
- Bruce Wilson, Independent researcher, Lenoir City, TN, USA.
- Lesley Wyborn, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
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