The Global Open Research Commons IG will coordinate global activity on the development of Open Science platforms such as the EOSC, AOSP and ARDC. The Interest Group holds the overall mission and defines key activities for development through working groups, the first of which is focusing on the features/attributes of ORCs, and documenting a subset of international clouds/commons. It will also socialise the community to the concept, definition and value of Research Commons. The GORC International Model WG worked under the umbrella of the Global Open Research Commons (GORC) IG and the GORC II WG will also do so.

All RDA GORC entities are working towards a roadmap for the integration of research services in pursuit of cross-country and cross-discipline global open research commons. The GORC IM WG’s goal was to evaluate and recommend a model for functions/attributes for global research commons that allows researchers and developers to coordinate services and create roadmaps for international interoperability. In addition, when possible, the group captured KPIs or metrics that can be used to track engagement or success of services provided by Commons. In pursuit of this goal the WG instituted a speaker series where representatives of Commons from around the world share the current state and vision of their initiatives with the WG. The WG developed a narrative document containing descriptions of functions and attributes of different commons in parallel with the speaker series and released draft versions of commons attribute models. Task Groups were formed to focus on specific areas of the model. Both the model and a report with information from the narrative document were endorsed by RDA in October, 2023 and as a recommendation in October. 2024. The GORC IM WG continued working on making parts of the model machine-actionable and facilitating adoption of the model, including investigating and developing adoption tools and approaches.

The GORC II WG addresses new areas of work identified during the GORC IM WG, specifically profiles that detail classes or specific implementations of all or relevant subsets of the the considerations in the GORC IM, slices that showcase thematic subsets of the model, and mappings or connections with existing frameworks, models, principles, and vocabularies. Maintaining the GORC IM and addressing minor revisions is also within the scope of the GORC II WG, with larger revisions and additions such as incorporating research hardware and maturity layers set as future work.

Typology: https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00087 V1.1 model and report: https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00119, https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00097 DSJ publication: https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2024-056

Following a series of BoF sessions, an initial Interest Group meeting was held at P14 in Helsinki. Since then, initiatives such as EOSC and ARDC have matured and advanced the definitions of their core elements and operating methods. This was used to provide definitions of the Commons and a proposed typology at P16 for validation by the wider community, which has since been published as a supporting output.

As a BoF the GORC-WG submitted an original case statement to the TAB in early January 2021. The WG was endorsed by RDA on July 30, 2021. The group has been meeting monthly since the group’s first regular session on June 17, 2021, starting a speaker series in November 2021. Several draft deliverables were shared with the community during 2023, and the WG submitted final outputs to RDA in October 2023, which were endorsed shortly thereafter. The WG took a brief hiatus from November 2023 – January 2024, and began meeting monthly again in February 2024 to discuss ongoing tasks and adoption of the model. Adopters of the model presented at 22nd RDA plenary and next steps were discussed. From June to November 2024 the GORC groups worked towards submitting the model as a recommendation, creating profiles, and preparing for implementation maps.

The IG’s outputs have been endorsed by RDA in July 2023 are are available online: typology and definitions, diagram. The IM WG’s outputs have been endorsed by RDA in October 2023 and are available online: model (V1.0), report (V1.0), as well as the RDA endorsed recommendation (V1.1).

The statement of work for the GORC II WG was the main focus of the GORC combined session at P23 in Costa Rica. It will be submitted in January 2025, with the GORC co-chairs requesting a delayed start date. Intermediate outputs from the GORC IM WG feed directly into the work of the GORC II WG.

The most recent joint GORC IG/WG session was held at P23 (hybrid): slides (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1h2FuLtrTPAEflae8SxCFoJqcFrqafAUM/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=118117679788159173045&rtpof=true&sd=true), notes (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cm97S3NCt9dFtcEfKIVc2DWD8c1-_iLT/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=118117679788159173045&rtpof=true&sd=true), recording (https://youtu.be/RNJkII9EKr4?si=zhGmE-1aPsIQ8u6s)