This special collection derives from the International Symposium on Data Science (DSWS-2023; https://ds.rois.ac.jp/article/dsws_2023) that was held in Tokyo, Japan (11-15 December 2023). The symposium was organized by the Joint Support-Center for Data Science Research, Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS-DS) in collaboration with the Committee of International Collaborations on Data Science and the Science Council of Japan (SCJ). The event was also strongly supported and facilitated by the global data community, led by the World Data System (WDS) and the Committee on Data (CODATA) of the International Science Council (ISC). It aimed to facilitate information exchange regarding the archiving, publication, and utilization of diverse data relating to societal and global challenges such as COVID-19, information proliferation, global warming, extreme weather events, regional conflicts, etc., and their impact on the Asia-Oceania region.

The symposium was organized in several interdisciplinary scientific sessions involving international data activities in the Asia-Oceania region and beyond. They included various aspects of accreditation schemes and their benefits, individual international initiatives, data centres and networks, data management planning, data policies, legacy data, historical data, data sharing, citation and publication across disciplines.

Over 80 presentations were made, triggering fruitful discussions that focused on forming international collaborative networks related to open data in the region and establishing concrete cooperation frameworks within the global framework. The goal of the symposium was to build consensus on various aspects of research data management by stakeholders in alignment with open research policies and FAIR principles. The conducted scientific sessions could potentially lead to new ways of promoting interdisciplinary and collaborative research, data management platforms, and efficient data reuse under different scientific disciplines, based on evidence and feedback from the Asia and Oceania communities.

This special collection brings together articles that outline best practices for attaining the foregoing goal. In particular, it foregrounds research articles that relate to developing data systems and data analysis procedures from a multidisciplinary viewpoint.

Guest Editors
· Tomoya Baba (Research Organization of Information and Systems)
· David Castle (University of Victoria)
· Tyng-Ruey Chuang (Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica)
· Masaki Kanao (Research Organization of Information and Systems)
· Johnathan Kool (Australian Antarctic Division)
· Kassim S. Mwitondi (Sheffield Hallam University)
· Yubao Qiu (GEO Cold Regions Initiative)
· Juanle Wang (China Academy of Science)