The Value of the Research Data Alliance to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)

The objective of the EOSC is to give the European Union a global lead in research data management and ensure that European scientists reap the full benefits of data-driven science, by offering ‘1.7 million European researchers and 70 million professionals in science and technology a virtual environment with free at the point of use, open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and scientific disciplines’ [2]

Existing RDA activities relevant to EOSC Implementation

Architecture

EOSC will be a federation of research data infrastructures, adding a soft overlay to connect them and making them operate as one seamless European research data infrastructure. This kind of federated architecture is central to RDA vision of barrier removal and data sharing. RDA already has a number of working groups relevant to this activity, for example:

• Brokering Framework WG
• National Data Services IG
• Provenance Patterns WG
• RDA/CODATA Legal Interoperability IG
• Storage Service Definitions WG

Data

RDA fosters the development of professional practices in research data management and stewardship on an international scale. Specifically related to:

• better culture and practical skills in research data management, 
• developing FAIR data tools, and
• fostering demand for FAIR data through consistent FAIR data mandates and incentives.

These relate to all the aspects of FAIR data: Making data Findable through catalogues of data and services and metadata; making data Accessible through Persistent Unique Identifiers and Data Management Plans; making data Interoperable through interoperable standards and common metadata; and making data Reusable, through common IPR and legal provisions such as Creative Commons. Furthermore, disciplinary interoperability frameworks like R are essential to the realisation of FAIR and fora, like RDA, are well-placed to encourage interdisciplinary and cross-profession exchange [6].

• Brokering Framework WG
• Data Versioning WG
• DMP Common Standards WG
• Exposing Data Management Plans WG
• FAIR Data Maturity Model WG
• Repository Audit and Certification DSA–WDS Partnership WG
• WDS/RDA Assessment of Data Fitness for Use WG

Disciplinary Group examples:

• Agrisemantics WG
• International Materials Resource Registries WG
• Wheat Data Interoperability WG

Services

RDA is active in the 5 types of services mentioned in roadmap: Identification and authentication services; Work environment/space services (e.g. logbook, settings, compliance record and pending issues); Access to relevant service information ; Services to find, access, re-use and analyse research data generated by others, accessible through appropriate catalogues of datasets and data services (e.g. analytics, fusion, mining, processing); and Services to make their own data FAIR, to store them and ensure long-term preservation.

Generalising services currently being provided to specific scientific communities, so they are not limited by the contexts of disciplines or national boundaries.

• Data Citation WG
• Data Description Registry Interoperability WG
• Data Usage Metrics WG
• Research Data Collections WG
• Research Data Repository Interoperability WG

Access and interface

Services provided under the EOSC would be made accessible via an EOSC portal, globalising metadata standards for including of these services in catalogues, both for universal entry point for all potential users and for community specific interfaces built on a common platform.

• Data Type Registries WG
• FAIRSharing Registry: connecting data policies, standards & databases WG
• Metadata Standards Catalog WG
• Persistent Identification of Instruments WG
• PID Kernel Information WG
• Software Source Code Identification WG

Rules of Participation

Leveraging the clear and transparent RDA process for producing and endorsing its outputs as “Recommendations", in Europe, two waves of outputs from the RDA groups have been submitted to the European multi-stakeholders’ platform on ICT standardisation (MSP - e02758) to be recognised as ICT technical specifications. This standardisation process has also targeted the robustness and openness of the RDA process, positively evaluated by the MSP as a pre-condition for the ICT technical specifications identification process. [7]

RDA recommendations recognised as ICT technical specifications:

1. *TS1 Data Foundation & Terminology Model
2. *TS2 PID Information Types API- Persistent Identifier Type Registry
3. *TS3 Data Type Registries Model
4. *TS4 Practical Policies recommendations
5. **TS5 Dynamic-data Citation Methodology
6. **TS6 Data Description Registry Interoperability Model
7. **TS7 RDA/WDS Repository Audit and Certification Catalogues
8. **TS8 RDA/WDS Publishing Data Services

*Approved and published in the Official Journal of the European Union “COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING DECISION (EU) 2017/1358” of 20 July 2017 on the identification of ICT Technical Specifications for referencing in public procurement https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32017D1358
**approved but awaiting publication in March 2019

Governance and Global Engagement

RDA is a bottom up organization, but equally an organization that funders and others trust to carry out its mission subject to its guiding principles. The RDA Council [8] is responsible for the oversight, sustainability, and overall success of RDA, including approval of candidate Working and Interest Groups to ensure alignment with RDA goals, it is composed of 9 elected members from across the globe. The RDA Technical Advisory Board (TAB) [9] provides technical expertise and advice to the Council, and assists in development, review and promotion of RDA Working & Interest Groups. The RDA Organisational Advisory Board (OAB) [10] represents the interests of RDA’s organisational members and ensure that their input and needs play a role in guiding the programs and activities of the RDA. The RDA Funders Forum is composed of a group of funding organisations / representatives with an interest in research data and related data policies who meet at RDA plenaries to share information and openly discuss challenges/opportunities facing funding agencies. The Funders Forum also have an Interest Group [11] in which funders from around the globe bring subjects that they wish to discuss publicly among themselves and on which they want to gather input from the RDA community.

Since its launch in 2013, European Research Infrastructure projects have been actively involved in RDA. The Group of European Data Experts (GEDE) [12] a group of European data professionals appointed by invitation from various European Research Infrastructures and some specialists from RDA, promotes, fosters and drives discussions and consensus forming on creating guidelines, core components and concrete data fabric configuration building based on a bottom-up process.

Finally, a series of RDA groups, are specifically focused on supporting UN Sustainable Development Goals, including:

• Big Data Modelling of UN SDGs WG
• Blockchain Applications in Health WG
• Capacity Development for Agriculture Data WG
• On-Farm Data Sharing (OFDS) WG
• Rice Data Interoperability WG
• Wheat Data Interoperability WG