status: Recognised & Endorsed

Chair (s): Marek Suchánek, Peter Neish, Tomasz Miksa

Group Email: [group_email]

Secretariat Liaison: enquiries[at]rd-alliance.org


In a nutshell

This group produced a recommendation on machine-actionable DMPs. 

To get more information on the activites:

In case of any questions, please do not hesitate to contact group chairs. We are always happy to help!

 

Original charter

The need for establishing this working group was articulated during the 9th plenary meeting in Barcelona during the Active DMPs IG session.  The discussion was framed by a white paper by Simms et al. on machine-actionable data management plans (DMPs). The white paper is based on outputs from the IDCC workshop held in Edinburgh in 2017 that gathered almost 50 participants from Africa, America, Australia, and Europe. It describes eight community use cases which articulate consensus about the need for a common standard for machine-actionable DMPs (where machine actionable is defined as “information that is structured in a consistent way so that machines, or computers, can be programmed against the structure”)

 

The specific focus of this working group is on developing common information model and specifying access mechanisms that make DMPs machine-actionable. The outputs of this working group will help in making systems interoperable and will allow for automatic exchange, integration, and validation of information provided in DMPs, for example, by checking whether a provided PID links to an existing dataset, if hashes of files match to their provenance traces, or whether a license was specified. The common information models are NOT intended to be prescriptive templates or questionnaires, but to provide re-usable ways of representing machine-actionable information on themes covered by DMPs.

 

The vision that this working group will work to realise is one where DMPs are developed and maintained in such a way that they are fully integrated into the systems and workflows of the wider research data management environment. To achieve this vision we will develop a common data model with a core set of elements. Its modular design will allow customisations and extensions using existing standards and vocabularies to follow best practices developed in various research communities. We will provide reference implementations of the data model using popular formats, such as JSON, XML, RDF, etc.  This will enable tools and systems involved in processing research data to read and write information to/from DMPs. For example, a workflow engine can add provenance information to the DMP, a file format characterization tool can supplement it with identified file formats, and a repository system can automatically pick suitable content types for submission and later automatically identify applicable preservation strategies.

 

The deliverables will be publicly available under CC0 license and will consist of models, software, and documentation. The documentation will describe functionality and semantics of terms used, rationale, standard compliant ways for customisation, and requirements for supporting systems to fully utilise the capabilities of the developed model.

 

The working group will be open to everyone and will involve all stakeholders representing the whole spectrum of entities involved in research data management, such as: researchers, tool providers, infrastructure operators, repository staff and managers, software developers, funders, policy makers, and research facilitators. We will take into account requirements of each group.This will likely speed up and increase adoption of the working group outcomes.

 

The group will predominantly collaborate online, but will use any possibility to meet in person during RDA plenaries, conferences, workshops, hackathons or other events in which their members participate. All meetings in which decisions are made will be documented and their summaries will be circulated using the RDA website.

 

The work will be performed iteratively and incrementally following the best practices from system and software engineering. We will evaluate preliminary drafts of the model with community to receive early feedback and to ensure that the developed common model is interoperable and exchangeable across implementations. We will also express existing DMPs using the developed common model and will investigate how to support modification of machine actionable DMPs by various tools involved in data management process, while ensuring that proper provenance and versioning information is stored with. Finally, we will build prototypes to investigate possible system integrations and to evaluate to which degree the information contained in the DMPs can be automatically validated and which actions or alerts depending on a DMP state can be triggered, e.g. by sending notifications to repositories or funder systems.

 

During our work we will monitor parallel efforts and engage with various research communities to find candidates for pilot studies and to transfer the acquired know-how. Towards the end of the lifetime of the working group we will launch pilot projects in which the model will be customised to suit the needs of the identified interested communities. Pilot studies will use the models to integrate systems and demonstrate how machine-actionable DMPs can work.

 

We believe that the outcomes delivered by this group will contribute to improving the quality of research data and research reproducibility, while at the same time reducing the administrative burden for researchers and systems administrators.

Posts

02
March
2023

RDA Plenary: Data Management Planning: where are we and where do we want to be?

by Tomasz Miksa

Dear all, The next RDA plenary in Sweden is just around the corner. We will have a joint session on DMPs. https://www.rd-alliance.org/data-management-planning-where-are-we-and-wh... We would like to have some more room for discussion this time. Please let us know whether there are specific topics for discussion. Depending on this we may create different breakout groups.
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05
December
2022

RDA 20th Plenary - Notification of Acceptance

by Secretariat Group Account

Dear Chairs of the Active Data Management Plans IG, the DMP Common Standards WG and the Discipline-specific Guidance for Data Management Plans WG, Your RDA 20th Plenary (P20) session application titled ‘Data Management Planning: where are we and where do we want to be?’ has been approved. Please consider this your official notification of acceptance. * Draft programme to be published on Friday, 16th December 2022 * Any requests for changes must be made by Friday, 13th January 2023 * The programme will be deemed final by Thursday, 19th January 2023
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17
November
2022

SV: [External] SU-EOSC Nordic maDMP project full dataset now published in Dataverse

by Joakim Philipson

Hi all, this is just to inform you that the full dataset of the SU-EOSC Nordic 5.3.2 maDMP project, that was mentioned at the RDA for Data Management Planning workshop on Nov. 10, has now been published in Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/MGZBAL
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04
November
2022

Upcoming Webinar: Integrating Research Data Management Services using maDMPs

by Yolanda Meleco

Hello DMP Common Standards WG Members - Thank you to the Co-chairs and members of this group for agreeing to present at our upcoming webinar titled "Integrating Research Data Management Services using maDMPs” hosted by the RDA-US on 22 November 2022 at 17:00 UTC. We are writing to ask for your help please in promoting this webinar to your colleagues (see instructions below) and to invite you to register for the event.
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28
October
2022

Invitation to participate in 'A Decade of Data: 10 Years of the RDA' events and activities

by Connie Clare

Good day, The RDA Secretariat would like to invite the DMP Common Standards WG to participate in ‘A Decade of Data’: Celebrating 10 Years of the Research Data Alliance’. 10 months to celebrate 10 years of the RDA
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16
August
2022

New chair of the WG: Marek Suchanek

by Tomasz Miksa

Dear all, I'm delighted to inform you that Marek Suchánek is the new chair of the DMP Common Standards WG. Marek Suchánek is part of the DS Wizard team and has been actively contributing to the activities of this group. He has experience of working with ontologies, especially with the serialization of the DMP Common Standard.
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19
July
2022

Post-Plenary 19 Webinar

by Yolanda Meleco

After a successful Plenary 19 held last month, RDA chairs will be convening once again on 28 July to share the takeaways of the breakout sessions held during the event and discuss next steps. This is the first time a webinar of this type is being offered at RDA, which will hopefully provide members a clearer understanding of the collaboration approaches among RDA working and interest groups, as well as an opportunity to hear directly from chairs on their vision for future activities.
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30
May
2022

RDA Plenary - DMP Common Standards and Active DMPs - preparation for the joint session

by Tomasz Miksa

Dear colleagues, I would like to remind you that groups working on DMPs are going to have a joint session at the upcoming RDA plenary (virtual). Details can be found here: https://www.rd-alliance.org/beyond-machine-actionable-dmps-lets-go-forwa...
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27
May
2022

Invitation and Help with Promotion for “Professionalising Data Stewardship | Global Updates To Inform RDA Community” Webinar taking place 30 June

by Yolanda Meleco

Hello.  We are writing to invite you to an upcoming webinar presented by the RDA Professionalising Data Stewardship Interest Group taking place at 14:00 UTC on 30 June. The webinar will introduce the Outputs of the groups and include the following speakers:
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14
April
2022

RDA Plenary 19 Draft Programme Now Available

by Secretariat Group Account

Dear Group Chairs, The RDA 19th Plenary draft programme is now available: https://www.rd-alliance.org/rdas-19th-plenary-programme-0. Please note that the Plenary programme is a part of the International Data Week programme that can be accessed at https://www.rd-alliance.org/international-data-week-2022-programme.
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