The French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation partners with the Research Data Alliance

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The French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation partners with the Research Data Alliance
10 Dec 2019

The French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation partners with the Research Data Alliance

The Research Data Alliance is pleased to announce a landmark partnership agreement with the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI – Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur, de la Recherche et de l’Innovation) and the French Centre national de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

 


As outlined in the French National Strategy for Open Science (Plan National pour la Science Ouverte PNSO [1]), launched by MESRI in July 2018, France is committed to making scientific research results open to all – researchers, companies, citizens. This national strategy outlines three major commitments to achieve this objective: Generalising Open Access to publications, Structuring research data and making it available through open access, and Being part of a sustainable European and International Open Science dynamic. The Research Data Alliance, whose mission is to build the social and technical bridges to enable the open sharing and re-use of data, can support the French Ministry and the national stakeholders to achieve all of these objectives. In the area of research data management and services, the pre-eminent organisation for ensuring globally developed services is RDA.

France will support the Research Data Alliance (RDA), an international network that establishes best practices concerning research data. It will Support to the Research Data Alliance as an international community driven forum for the resolution and development of research data management, open science, data interoperability and FAIR challenges, is a concrete action outlined in the PNSO. The French Ministry have wasted no time in delivering on that commitment by supporting the RDA French national activities and financially contributing to the RDA Secretariat (responsible for the daily operations).

 

"This partnership agreement is extremely important for RDA and for the international community,” says Hilary Hanahoe, RDA Secretary-General, “it demonstrates the French government’s commitment to delivering on its own strategy, outlining the importance of identifying global best practices and standards for research data. I am very grateful to the French Ministry and CNRS for their commitment to RDA and for their vision in taking advantage of a cohort of data professionals collaborating across the globe to identify solutions that are open to all for design, development, adoption and development. This partnership agreement is a fantastic milestone for RDA, the first national commitment since the launch of our RDA Regional Engagement Strategy [2] in late 2018".

 

Over 500 RDA members are from France and CNRS has been actively engaged in RDA since its launch in 2013. CNRS is responsible for the creation and animation of the “RDA France community” [3] and aims to facilitate knowledge sharing between RDA Global and national stakeholders, encouraging French participation of “data practitioners” in RDA and the adoption of RDA recommendations and outputs in France. This commitment is strengthened by the CNRS open science roadmap newly released by Antoine Petit on November 18, 2019 [4].

 

“RDA in France gathers a vibrant, diverse and ever growing community engaged in Open Science and science data sharing, across research organisations, in close collaboration between researchers, IT engineers, librarians and data stewards,” says Françoise Genova, head of the RDA National node managed by the CNRS.

 

"Support to RDA was a commitment of the National Plan for Open Science, because we consider that it is essential to rely on scientific communities to structure and share science data. One has to rely on concrete practices and issues to succeed, and not impose an Open Science which would be defined top-down, in a ministry or by the governance of science organisations. RDA has an essential role to play to avoid that research data become a Babel tower, and to build good practices and the linga franca research data needs to play a stronger role in research," says Marin Dacos, Open Science Advisor to the Director-General for Research and Innovation at the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation.

 

For more information contact enquiries[at]rd-alliance.org