I am a digital archivist working at the Digital Repository of Ireland, the organisation which co-hosted RDA Plenary 3 in Dublin with Insight and the Australian National Data Service in March 2014. As RDA3 was in my home town it was easy for me to attend; and in September I was lucky enough to be awarded an Early Career Researcher bursary to attend RDA4 in Amsterdam.

Impressions of RDA Plenary 4

Having attended the third plenary held at Dublin in March 2014, I was delighted to have been more actively involved in the fourth plenary via the Early Career Programme. I also had to chance to attend the EUDAT conference, which was held in the same venue and immediately followed the plenary.

Data in context Interest Group had a breakout session on Tuesday 23^rd of September in the 4^th RDA Plenary in Amsterdam.  Session was lead by Brigitte Jörg, Keith Jeffery, and Rebecca Koskela, who stepped into Brigitte’s place as a co-chair of this Interest Group in the end of this meeting.  About 20 participants were present in the session.

What is Data in Context IG?

The fourth plenary meeting in Amsterdam was the first RDA event I had the opportunity to attend. My participation at the plenary meeting was made possible by the Early Career European Researchers Programme. I am very grateful for this opportunity and explicitly want to thank the organizers for giving young scientists the chance to take part in such an event and exchange ideas with more than 500 experts on research data.

In the recent years the advancement of empirical and information technologies have rapidly increased the amount of data in the Agronomic domain. However, the data currently available are highly distributed and patchy in nature. Using these data more effectively and taking advantage of associated cross-disciplinary research opportunities poses a major challenge to both domain scientists and information technologists.