After the 8th plenary in Denver, in September 2016, there will be 4 newly elected TAB members.There are 8 continuing TAB members as illustrated in the table below:
| Name | Region | Role | Discipline | Term ends |
| Continuing TAB members | ||||
| Françoise Genova | Europe / Africa | Data Policy Maker | Natural Sciences | 2017 |
| Carole Palmer | Americas | Other | Social Sciences | 2017 |
| Andrew Treloar | Asia / Australasia | Data Technologist | Humanities | 2017 |
| Peter Wittenburg | Europe / Africa | Data Technologist | Humanities | 2017 |
| Wenbo Chu | Asia / Australasia | Data Policy Maker | Engineering and technology | 2018 |
| Steve Diggs | Americas | Data Manager | Engineering and technology | 2018 |
| Ingrid Dillo | Europe / Africa | Data Policy Maker | Humanities | 2018 |
| Larry Lannom | Americas | Data Technologist | Engineering and technology | 2018 |
| Outgoing TAB members | ||||
| Peter Fox | Americas | Data Technologist | Natural Sciences | 2016 |
| Simon Cox | Asia / Australasia | Data Technologist | Natural Sciences | 2016 |
| Susanna-Assunta Sansone | Europe / Africa | Data Manager | Medical and Health Sciences | 2016 |
| Rainer Stotzka | Europe / Africa | Data Generator | Engineering and technology | 2016 |
The list of candidates and full details are available at: https://rd-alliance.org/tab-elections-2016-candidates
A summary is presented below:
| Name | Region | Role | Discipline |
| Karl Benedict | Americas | Data Technologist | Natural sciences |
| Paul Uhlir | Americas | Data Policy Maker | Social Sciences |
| Devika Madalli | Asia and Oceania | Other | Social Sciences |
| Helen Glaves | Europe and Africa | Data Manager | Natural sciences |
| Ralph Müller-Pfefferkorn | Europe and Africa | Data Technologist | Engineering and technology |
| Mervyn O'Luing | Europe and Africa | Data User | Natural sciences |
| Giacomo Pongiglione | Europe and Africa | Data User | Medical and Health Sciences |
| Rainer Stotzka | Europe and Africa | Data Generator | Engineering and technology |
| Tobias Weigel | Europe and Africa | Data User | Natural sciences |
There are 3 balancing criteria used for the TAB elections:
- Region
There should be between 2-5 TAB members who represent each region (Europe / Africa, Americas, Asia / Australasia) - Discipline
TAB members should represent multiple disciplines (Natural sciences, Engineering and technology, Medical and health sciences, Agricultural sciences, Social sciences, Humanities) - Role
TAB members should include individuals working in various work roles (Data Generator, Data Manager, Data Technologist, Data User, Data Policy Maker, Other)
The potential impact of the balancing criteria on the TAB elections 2016 is explained in the tables below. Areas highlighted in orange are where balancing criteria may have an impact.
Table 1 shows the impact of balancing for region on the TAB election. In this election, there can be at most two new members from Europe and Africa, at most 2 new members from the Americas, and at most 3 new members from Asia and Oceania. As there are 6 candidates from Europe / Africa, the region balancing criterion may need to be applied to bring the final number from this region to within limits.
As there are at least two members from each region already on TAB, the minimum quota has already been filled for each region, so this won’t have any impact.
Table 1: Impact of balancing for region [Min 2 per region/Max 5 per region]
| Regions | Europe and Africa | Americas | Asia and Oceania |
| Continuing TAB members | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| Maximum number of new TAB members | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Number of candidates | 6 | 2 | 1 |
Table 2 shows the impact of balancing for disciplines: [min 0 per disc./max 5 per disc.]
| Discipline | Natural sciences | Engineering and technology | Medical and health sciences | Agricultural sciences | Social sciences | Humanities |
| Continuing TAB members | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Maximum number of new TAB members | 4 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 2 |
| Candidate Distribution | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
Table 3 shows the impact of balancing for roles: [min 0 per role/max 5 per role]
| Discipline | Data technologist | Data policy maker | Data manager | Data user | Data generator | Other |
| Continuing TAB members | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Maximum number of new TAB members | 2 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Candidate Distribution | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
Due to combination of the roles and disciplines of the candidates for this election, and those of the existing TAB members, both the Discipline and the Role balancing criterion will have no impact on this election.
Additional references:
- TAB election process https://rd-alliance.org/organisation/rda-tab/tab-election-2015-call-nominations.html
- Full description of election process and balancing criteria http://doi.org/10.15497/E9F94145-5EA1-44CC-9428-85498CF85E30