On January 13, 2026, I was on Posit’s Data Science Lab to talk about my Positron settings and other neat workflow-y things I use to make my life easier. I’ll post the video here once it’s up. This isn’t a standard blog post—it’s mostly just a list of the stuff we talked about, with lots of different links to other resources.

It’s been a very long time since I had my own blog. In recent years, I’ve had the privilege of guest blogging for various outlets, including The White House, The Good Science Project, dataindex.us, and Upstream (among others). I’ll continue to guest blog from time-to-time when a topic is appropriate for a specific venue. However, I can’t always find a home for some of my perspectives and this blog will fill that void in my publishing portfolio.

Metadata for nearly 60,000 new datasets were added to the Federal Data Catalog (FDC) on Data.gov in the first two weeks of 2026. The totals reported on the Data.gov landing page rose from 376,504 on midnight January 1st to 433,944 at noon January 13th. Almost all of that increase was the result of adding new federal data assets to the catalog, which now appear to total 397,191.

Reutilización CC BY 4.0

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new guide from the BMFTR-funded (Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space) project “Professionalisierung der Open-Access-Repositorien-Infrastruktur in Deutschland (Pro OAR DE)”: “Forschungsdaten: Handlungsfeld für institutionelle Open-Access-Repositorien. Pro OAR DE Handreichung” (available in German only). Matthias, L., Pampel, H., Khamis, C. O., & Rothfritz, L. (2025).

por Aída López Sosa Flores de primavera, luna de otoño: ¿cuándo acabáis? ¿Hasta qué punto se conoce el  pasado? Li Yu. Emperador chino Ayer como hoy, el comportamiento de los altos funcionarios es cuestión de Estado.

Endlich setzt Europa den Hämmern aus den USA was entgegen.

Reply to ‘Genome engineering for conservation might be a game changer but only with the incorporation of Indigenous voices’ in Nature Reviews Biodiversity

Im letzten Quartal des Jahres 2025 sind mehrere wissenschaftliche Publikationen erschienen, die durch den Publikationsfonds des Landes Brandenburg gefördert und im Open Access veröffentlicht wurden. Sie stammen aus unterschiedlichen Fachdisziplinen und zeigen die thematische Breite der Forschung in Brandenburg.

Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) is a practical tool designed for humanitarian emergencies that allows aid workers to quickly understand how a crisis affects women, men, boys, and girls differently. Because there is often no time for long, detailed studies when lives are at risk, RGA provides a practical method to gather “good enough” information immediately to ensure that aid is safe, fair, and effective. It works by using existing data

We are pleased to announce the opening of a new call for applications for the rOpenSci Champions Program in Spanish , which will begin in 2026.