Strategic Planning Committee members are: Maria Gould (DataCite), Joel Gurin (CODE), Robert Hanisch (Campostella Research and Consulting), Kristi Holmes (Northwestern University), Lynda Kellam (UPenn, Data Rescue Project), Christine Kirkpatrick (San Diego Supercomputer Center, UC San Diego, GO FAIR US), Chris Marcum (Data Foundation), Mark Parsons (ESIP), and Katherine Skinner (IOI). Alex Wade serves as the project’s lead consultant, with Maryam Zaringhalam and Lisa Cuevas Shaw serving as COS’s project leads.
Since Fall 2025, the Center for Open Science (COS) has been working with a committee of experts in research data infrastructures to develop a strategic plan for the Coalition for Resilient Research Data Infrastructure (CRRDI) — a nascent cross-sectoral coalition working to build a more resilient ecosystem for federally funded research data. Today, we are releasing that draft plan for community comment by September 30, 2026.
This effort began with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to respond to growing concerns about the integrity and resilience of public data. As a champion of lifecycle open science, COS is committed to persistent and reliable public access to research information — and long attuned to how fragile the infrastructure supporting that access can be. We recognized, however, that we are one of many actors in a complex, distributed, and interconnected research information ecosystem, and that no single organization can advance a more resilient future for research data infrastructure alone.
CRRDI is meant to bring together the organizations that operate this infrastructure, the funders and policymakers who resource and shape it, and the researchers, entrepreneurs, and communities who depend on it. Its purpose is to address two questions: how do we enable a more resilient research data ecosystem that is resistant to single points of failure? And how do we coordinate across a distributed system to address that challenge together?
To chart a path toward CRRDI's establishment and strategy, we assembled a planning committee with expertise spanning open research infrastructures, data and information stewardship, data rescue and resilience, policy, and governance across a range of domains. The resulting draft plan is organized around three pillars:
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Assess and monitor the repository landscape. Building shared, community-led frameworks and tools to understand where the repository ecosystem — and the underlying infrastructures they rely on — is most vulnerable and how those risks change over time.
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Develop diverse, sustained funding and governance. Coordinating investment more efficiently and building the funding models and structures that let repositories endure.
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Develop a shared outreach, advocacy, and action strategy. Equipping the community to make the case for sustained investment and to respond when data is at risk.
We’re releasing the plan today as a draft for community comment. CRRDI is a coalition still in formation, and this plan is meant to be an anchor the community can organize around, reflecting existing efforts that advance pieces of the strategy and highlighting gaps and opportunities that are yet to be filled. Several parts of the plan are deliberately unfinished: who sponsors and contributes to each strategy, how the coalition governs itself, and the roadmap for implementation. We will update the plan over the coming months as comments come in and we connect with organizations and community members willing to commit to joining the coalition.
Most importantly, we want to hear from you. Do these strategies serve the ecosystem's real needs? Are they feasible? What existing work should we be building on rather than duplicating? And where might your organization's work connect?
Read the plan and share your feedback by form or email at data-resilience@cos.io. Comments are open through September 30, 2026. You can also join us on Friday, August 7 at 2pm ET for a webinar launching the draft strategic plan, as well as office hours hosted by COS and our partners in the coming months.
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