Polar Data Forum IV – An Ocean of Opportunities

This paper reports on the Hackathon Sessions organised at the Polar Data Forum IV (PDF IV) (20-24 September 2021), during which 351 participants from 50 different countries discussed collaboratively about the latest developments in polar data management. The 4th edition of the PDF hosted lively discussions on (i) best practices for polar data management, (ii) data policy, (ii) documenting data flows into aggregators, (iv) data interoperability, (v) polar federated search, (vi) semantics and vocabularies, (vii) Virtual Research Environments (VREs), and (viii) new polar technologies. This paper provides an overview of the organisational aspects of PDF IV and summarises the polar data objectives and outcomes by describing the conclusions drawn from the Hackathon Sessions. Keywords: Polar data management, open access data, data policy, interoperability, polar federated search, semantic data, best practices