The Repo2Pub WG aims to improve collaboration and coordination between repository and publisher workflows as they pertain to- and rely upon the data publication process. The WG proposes to refine and formally document a detailed workflow(s) between:

1. Journal;
2. Publication author; and
3. The relevant Earth, Space, and Environmental Science disciplinary data repository.

The aim is to identify cross-stakeholder dependencies to recommend activities that are necessary for relevant processes to move forward in a more coordinated, streamlined way. The WG intends to advance current progress on this effort by using the specific use cases of data submission to a data repository for curation and preservation at, or near, the time the respective manuscript is submitted to the journal that will cite the data.

The Repo2Pub WG plans to engage journal, repository, research communities and learned societies to solicit feedback that result in a set of recommendations for better transparency and coordination across both processes.

1. Group Home Page: Coordinating Earth, Space, and Environmental Science Data Preservation and Scholarly Publication Processes WG
2. Statement of work

Members of the Repo2Pub WG held several deep dives at previous RDA plenaries (P17, P18, P19, P20, P21) in the Earth and Environmental Science Interest Group (ESES_IG) and at P22 held a BoF in its own right to finalize the case statement: Proposed Working Group: Coordinating Earth, Space, and Environmental Science Data Preservation and Scholarly Publication Processes

The group was approved in August 2024 (Statement of work). The WG’s kick off session at P23 (‘Ensuring Data Underlying Publications are Sustainable, FAIR, CARE, and TRUSTed’) achieved strong attendance and engagement from publisher and repository stakeholders. The session featured three cross-stakeholder breakout discussion sessions (two in person, one virtual) where these groups began sharing pain points. Commonalities surfaced, and indicated a holistic and structured capture of this information would be required to fully capture the complex workflows and nuanced friction points for each group.

At P24 (First Progress Report of the Repo2Pub Working Group) we reviewed progress to date and discussed the interview framework for publishers and editors. Feedback from the audience suggested that Publisher questions could be better refined to capture the causes of variation in workflow and understand the range of options that are available. Learned societies were identified as possible stakeholder group that Repo2Pub had not considered, yet they are very important because of their influence on editorial policy setting on society-owned journals.

At P25 (Achieving our SoW – Progress and Way Forward) the key objectives were to provide an update on the progress of the RDA ““Repo2Pub” working group. The key points the session covered were to:

1. Update the community on the status of the working group activities, discuss related complementary efforts globally; and
2. Receive feedback on charting the way forward for the final months of the WG’s existence.

The 3 key outcomes/actions/takeaways were:

1. Given the proliferation of related groups and initiatives in the international space, there was group discussion/recommendation to move forward with a Repo2Pub-themed RDA IG to be a larger standing body that can operate out of the tight timescale required for RDA and FORCE11 WG’s.
2. Repo2Pub’s discovery of the relevance of scientific societies result is an important “output” and serve as an “input” for the new IG’s initial work.
3. One final piece of work beyond WG discussion and synthesis of the interviews would be to create a table for data repositories to contribute to identifying which relevant “actions” they currently enact that intersect with the journal publication process, in order to get a sense of how widely adopted certain actions/procedures are amongst the disciplinary and institutional repository community, in particular.