世界数据中心（WDC）成立于1957年，隶属国际科学联合会（ICSU）。在过去50多年的发展过程中，WDC在科学数据共享与服务上取得了重大进展。但与此同时，WDC也面临着许多挑战和问题。近几年来，国际科联对于WDC系统的问题进行了深入分析，提出了变革的建议方案，并于2008年10月在ICSU第29届大会上正式公布。笔者根据掌握的情况，对WDC的发展过程、遇到的问题及当前的变革情况做一介绍。在此基础上，分析我国WDC学科中心的机遇与挑战，并提出近期的对策建议。

World Data Center is one of the interdisciplinary bodies in the  International Council of Science (ICSU). It was established in 1957 to serve the International Geophysical Year (IGY). Because of its success, the WDC system was made permanent and used for postIGY data. Through more than 50 years development, WDC system has made prominent achievements. For example, it has established 51 sub discipline data centers in the world, while it just had 27 data centers at the beginning. The strengths and weaknesses often tell much about an organization. Some ingrained weaknesses in WDC system also were expanded with its development. These challenges include sustainable development mechanism, top design for multi-disciplinary data centers, data management and services capacities, inter-operability among different data centers in the whole system. ICSU had realized these problems since the end of the 1990s, and finally made a reform resolution in the autumn of 2008 after long time consideration. The core content in the reform resolution is to create a new World Data System which is based on the original World Data Center and the Federation of Astronomical and Geophysical Data Analysis Services (FAGS), absorb other state of the art centers. This reform will enhance ICSU′s strategic leadership role on behalf of the global scientific community in relation to the policies, management and stewardship of scientific data and information. Considering the data sharing background in China, especially the progress of National Science and Technology Infrastructure, six suggestion points are given to nine World Data Centers in China, i.e., (1) join WDS positively, (2) enhance the data service capacities for global scientific community, (3) enhance the data exchange with other WDCs in the world, (4) Create the interoperability system in WDS, (5) implement the data sharing standards and specifications, (6) Training and capacities building.