Abstract
The Committee on Data for Science and Technology of the International Council of Scientific Unions (CODATA) decided in February, 2001 to publish a new on-line peer reviewed journal, freely available to all. It would be called the Data Science Journal. The subsequent steps taken to launch this journal are described, leading to the publication of the first issue of 10 papers in April 2002 and of the first volume of 19 papers by December 2002. Some necessary corrections and improvements before the publication of a second volume of 19 papers in 2003 are also described.