Group Details
- Status: Recognised and Endorsed
- Group Focus: Data Management, Data Collection, Identify, Store, and Reserve, Disseminate, Link, and Find, Policy, Legal Compliance, and Capacity
- Chair(s): Natalie Harrower, Bernhard Miller, Andrew Treloar
- Secretariat Liaison: Bridget Walker
- TAB Liaison: Mingfang Wu
National Data Services (NDS) are a key component of the scientific data landscape. Many of them have been actively involved in the RDA, in activities like the Global Open Research Commons (GORC) International Model WG. NDSs’ contributions to the GORC International Model (GORC IM) demonstrated that they are organised in different ways and with different aims, depending strongly on the national context in which they operate.
The RDA is the natural venue to enable National Data Services to meet, learn from mutual challenges and exchange ideas about aims, organisation and practices. For these reasons RDA hosted a first incarnation of the National Data Services IG between 2016 and 2019, as described in the historical note below. Since then, new NDS have been established and the context in which they operate has evolved. In addition, the Global Open Research Commons (GORC) International Model has been developed, and can serve as a conceptual framework to shape exchanges between NDS. Renewing NDS IG would provide a much needed forum for NDS-specific discussions, and also provide Use cases and requirements for GORC, leading to eventual Recommendations and Outputs.
Historical note
The RDA hosted a National Data Services (NDS) IG from 2016 to 2019. This interest group was intended as a peer support mechanism for exchanging ideas and information between national data services. The focus then moved to the establishment of the Global Open Research Commons (GORC) IG, as explained in a message to the IG members posted in July 2019.
The National Data Services landscape has been significantly evolving since then, for instance with the creation of Digital Research Alliance of Canada in 2019 and of Recherche Data Gouv in France in 2022, whereas the Research Center for Open Science and Data Platform (RCOS) of the Japanese National Institute of Informatics (NII), the National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System in South Africa (NICIS), which has the Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA) among its key areas, and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) had been created between 2017 and 2019. Several other National Data Services were also presented among the cases studied by the GORC International Model WG.
More recently, the National Data Services cited above expressed the desire to use the RDA again as a vehicle for networking and learning from each other. They also provided the wide geographical coverage which is required to start an activity in the RDA. Jointly they organised a BoF session National Data Services – Do we want to meet in the RDA at P22 to assess interest in reinitiating the National Data Services IG. The BoF presentations and discussions demonstrated the diversity of the National Data Services landscape and the usefulness of re-establishing a placeholder for the topic in the RDA. The contribution of LA Referencia showed that liaison should be established with relevant regional Global Open Research Commons.
A second BoF session, National Data Services – Activities and Charter, was held during P23. Its main objective was to discuss a draft statement of work. The initial proponents and LA Referencia have been joined by CSC, the Finnish IT Center for Science, DANS, the Dutch national centre of expertise and repository for research data, CRDCN, the Canadian research infrastructure for statistical social and population health studies, and NFDI, the German National Research Data Infrastructure. Potential NDSs from other countries have been identified, and will be contacted as part of the IG renewal.