Abstract
This California State University federally funded project explores how transnational collaboration can
inform institutional readiness for research data management (RDM) in response to public access
mandates. As the largest public university system in the United States, the California State University
(CSU) system faces significant challenges in meeting the requirements of the 2022 White House OSTP
Memorandum on Public Access to Taxpayer-funded research, particularly around the data-sharing
component. Currently, CSU campuses maintain open-access repositories for publications but lack a
system-wide infrastructure for research data. In contrast, Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NII) and
its Research Center for Open Science and Data Platform (RCOS) offer a compelling national model
through the GakuNin RDM system, which supports interoperable, scalable, and researcher-centered data
sharing.
Funded by the NSF the project brought together CSU librarians, research administrators, and
infrastructure leaders with RCOS counterparts in Tokyo, Japan to explore socio-technical models of RDM.
Through a series of bilateral workshops and meetings held in Tokyo and next year in California, the
project supports capacity building, knowledge transfer, and institutional planning efforts. By fostering
mutual learning between two regions facing similar mandates for open science, the project aims to lay
the groundwork for a more equitable and interoperable future of data sharing. The Principal Investigator
will present Early-stage findings that offer insight into collaborative pathways for infrastructure
development and policy implementation, which can inform both local (CSU) and international scholarly
communications networks.