The NIST data science evaluation series: Part of the NIST information access division data science initiative

The Information Access Division (IAD) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a new Data Science Initiative in the fall of 2015. This initiative focuses on evaluation-driven research and will establish a new Data Science Evaluation series to facilitate research collaboration, to leverage shared technology and infrastructure, and to further build and strengthen the data science community. The evaluation series will consist of a pre-pilot to be launched in the fall of 2015, a pilot evaluation to be launched in 2016, and a full-scale multiple-track evaluation in 2017. In addition to these evaluations, this new initiative aims to address several infrastructure challenges and to provide standards to encourage easier group collaboration.