[Kathleen Shearer]

Dear members of the RDA Long Tail of Research Data Interest Group,
The Long Tail Interest Group was launched in 2013. Since its inception, the Interest Group has been a valuable mechanism to support discussions related to managing long tail data and has met regularly at the RDA plenaries to discuss topics of interest and address shared challenges. It is one of the most populated groups in RDA (276 members) and has produced a number of outcomes:
Good practice for discovery of long tail data (2014)
Spawned the “Repository Platforms for Research Data Interest Group” (2016)
And published a report, “Addressing​ ​the​ ​Gaps:​ ​Recommendations​ ​for Supporting​ ​the​ ​Long​ ​Tail​ ​of​ ​Research​ ​Data ” (2017)
Over the last couple of years, there has been less engagement by IG members and we have not had many suggestions about new activities or topics. We also have had a call out for new chairs for the past year, with no one expressing interest in taking the group forward.
Therefore, we are proposing to “freeze” the group for the moment, until there is renewed interest in pursuing activities related to the long tail. This means, the group will no longer be active, but will not be completely closed down. It will be “on hold” until there are some new people with new ideas and willingness to take up the mantle and lead the group.
It’s been a pleasure to co-chair this group, and I’d like to thank Wolfram Horstmann, Francoise Genova, and everyone else who has put time and effort into our activities over the past 6 years.
If you are interested in reviving and leading he group, please get in touch with me and Francoise.
Best regards,
Kathleen
Kathleen Shearer
Executive Director
Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)
http://www.coar-repositories.org

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