Dr. Eva Méndez is a researcher in Library and Information Sciences, associate professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She defines herself in her Twitter profile (@evamen) as “Semantic Web and Open Knowledge militant”. Her research focuses on metadata and vocabularies to improve interoperability among disciplines in different digital information infrastructures, as well as in metascience and Open Science. She was the Chair of the European Open Science Policy Platform, for the second mandate of the platform (2018-2020) and deputy vice-rector for Scientific Policy dealing with Open Science in her University, and co-chair of the YERUN Open Science Working Group. She was named Open Data Champion by SPARC Europe (2017) and she is currently involved in FAIR4Health and FAIRsFAIR projects.
WATCH THE INTERVIEW WITH Eva Méndez
FOCUS
Wider engagement at thematic/discipline level including new engagement initiatives within RDA (Health Science-FAIR data-Citizen Science) and mapping of EU projects related to FAIR in Europe and connecting them with RDA. Promoting interdisciplinary research through data and FAIR data.
However, due to the circumstances of COVID-19 the focus has changed over the time, with more engagement in this topic, the groups and activities created around COVID-19 but taking it as a use case to promote interdisciplinary / cross-disciplinary research through data.
INSIGHTS
- RDA for Interdisciplinary Research - dedicated RDA for disciplines page showcasing the value of RDA and the related work being done for interdisciplinary research
- Keynote Panelist as RDA ambassador at the RDA 14th Plenary in Helsinki: "Data as a game changer" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTXXhB78l4
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"Open Science Policy Platform final Report Progress on Open Science: Towards a Shared Research Knowledge System" (published April 2020). The report highlighted the role of RDA on the Open Science Registry - in collaboration with the OSPP, the RDA is building a platform to register the initiatives and pilots, including outcomes, of any work taken by any stakeholder to revise what qualitative and quantitative metrics might be used to evaluate and incentivise Open Science practices by any stakeholder within the EC Member States.
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Open Science Registry. The OS Registry is an idea merged from the Open Science Policy Platform to gather, describe and showcase, issues addressed by RDA. Open Science needs to be global and International, so the role of RDA here is crucial and will be underlined.
- Workshop Metadata catalogue integration for interdisciplinary research for EOSC related projects/clusters (Co-organized with FAIRsFAIR). Workshop focused on piloting metadata catalogue integration for interoperable research. Possible venue for collaboration under the RDA umbrella.
WORKING WITH THE RDA GROUPS
Supporting engagement, data solutions development and adoption
Raising FAIRness in health data and health research performing organisations (HRPOs) WG - group set up and coordiantion
Working sessions:
- P15: WG on Guidelines for Implementing FAIR Open Data Policy in Health Research Performing Organisations (HRPO)
- P14. Guidelines for Health Research Performing Organizations (HRPOs) to implement a FAIR data policy
RDA 16th Plenary - co-organised BoFs:
- BoF Open Science Registry
- BoF Data and Citizen Science / Community participation in Research
RDA-COVID19. Participate in the collective work of RDA-COVID19 particularly in the RDA-COVID19-Community-participation as co-moderator
SUPPORT FOR NATIONAL ACTIVITIES
At national level:
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Collaborating with the activities organized by RDA Spain node: Presentation at the RDA Spanish node: The future of Open Science initiatives in Spain 9 July 2020: https://rd-alliance.org/future-open-science-initiatives-spain [presentation] [image of the Webinar]
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RDA Portugal, meeting held in Porto during the Open Science Fair (16 of september), the experience of an RDA ambassador. Eva was one of the supporters of the idea of RDA Iberia (Spain + Portugal) and her collaboration with Portuguese Node is very close.