RDA Domain Ambassadors
About the Ambassadors
The RDA Domain Ambassadors are a network of disciplinary experts who bridge the gap between the global Research Data Alliance community and specific research domains. These distinguished professionals work to navigate daily research data challenges while promoting RDA outputs and FAIR data principles within their specialised fields.
Current Activities
Monthly Meet-ups
These informal meetings are opportunities for Ambassadors to exchange information about their work, whether in other RDA Interest and Working Groups or at external events and activities. Occasionally the meetings feature prepared presentations on topics and themes that are circulated in advance.
Outreach
Ambassadors are active in their research specialties and willing to bring their knowledge of both open science best practices as well as RDA outputs and recommendations to external events and activities. If you need someone to speak on a topic or facilitate a discussion, we invite you to contact someone with the experience you seek from the list below.
Community Support
As well as sharing their own work, Ambassadors are resources for discipline-specific feedback valuable for many RDA Groups. They can be resources for connecting outputs to uptake across scientific communities. RDA Group chairs are encouraged to share new outputs for comment, endorsement, and promotion among diverse communities.
About
RDA Ambassadors
The RDA Ambassadors Coordination Group serves as the ongoing, community-driven successor to the formal Domain Ambassadors programmes, ensuring continuity beyond the time-limited EOSC Future project (2021-2023).
Proposed at the Salzburg Plenary in 2023 following discussions about the value of a Domain Ambassadors Interest Group, this coordination group explicitly builds on past experiences of the RDA/EOSC Future Domain Ambassadors while expanding its scope to facilitate collaboration for those developing research training, engaging in science diplomacy, promoting FAIR data principles, and advocating for open science education.
Unlike the previous funded programmes that supported 14 specific domain experts based in Europe, the Coordination Group is open to participation from disciplinary and thematic community experts globally, providing an accessible platform for anyone interested in becoming an Ambassador and ensuring the valuable ambassador model continues within RDA’s permanent organisational structure.
Speaker List
With grateful thanks to the speakers for sharing their passion, enthusiasm and domain knowledge with the RDA community and beyond. Many of these experienced ambassadors remain available as speakers for events and meetings, continuing to share their expertise and insights with the broader research community.
Previous Activities
RDA/EOSC Future Domain Ambassadors
With 14 Domain Ambassadors selected through the EOSC Future programme (2021-2023), this initiative successfully connected diverse research communities, spanning agricultural sciences, engineering, earth sciences, and high energy physics, with open science practices and European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) services. Recognising that no ‘one size fits all’ approach works for data practices, this rich and diverse network of experts reached out to peers within their specialised fields to develop a deeper understanding of the unique requirements needed to advance Open Science and improve data management across disciplinary boundaries.
RDA Europe 4.0 pilot
The RDA Europe 4.0 Ambassador Programme served as the foundational pilot that informed the design of the subsequent and much larger RDA/EOSC Future Domain Ambassadors programme (2021-2023), which expanded from 6 to 14 ambassadors and increased funding levels while building on the lessons learned from this initial pilot initiative.