RDA 17th Plenary Meeting, Edinburgh, UK (Virtual)

  • Date

    20 – 23 Apr, 2021

  • Location

    Edinburgh, UK (Virtual) (online)

The Digital Curation Centre in collaboration with Jisc and UKRI hosted RDA’s 17th Plenary Meeting (RDA P17) on 20-23 April 2021. P17 was held on the virtual platform Juno.

Plenary 17 was focused on the themes of global challenges, global mechanisms for data reuse, sustainable solutions with benefits for all, and global cooperation to realise these ends.

  • How do you ensure global participation in the creation, relevance and use of mechanisms (technical and social) for data interchange?
  • How can technology lower barriers to uptake – and when might it create barriers? 
  • What means can we create to overcome non-technical barriers to uptake, be they formal (such as legislation and workflows) or informal, behavioural ones?
  • How do RDA values encourage diversity and safeguard the interests of all, rather than favouring privileged groups?
  • How can global fora speed up research into crises such as COVID-19, climate change and bio-diversity?

The plenary highlighted several research use cases around global collaboration to address grand challenges and ensure societal impact of data reuse. 

Please note you will only be able to access the platform if you have registered for RDA VP17. If you have only registered for one of the co-located events or IDCC21 (also hosted on Juno Live) but also wish to attend the Plenary, please ensure you register selecting an appropriate ticket type at https://rdavp17.eventbrite.co.uk.

If you have any questions please contact us at [email protected].

Join us at RDA VP17 and: 

  • Engage with the international community.
  • Find your peers so you can collaborate with like-minded individuals on work of shared interest.
  • Highlight your work, share updates and learn from others facing similar challenges.
  • Meet online with colleagues from across the global research data community and share ideas, whatever stage of your career you are at.
  • Attend an event without leaving your home – easier for balancing domestic responsibilities, reducing carbon footprint and minimising your time investment and travel costs.
  • Remember – It’s less expensive to attend and helps to strike a balance with other work commitments.
  • RDA Plenaries are inclusive and welcoming to newcomers – there’s a specific session aimed at helping newcomers make the most of the event.

RDA VP17 Theme: Opening data for global challenges

One of the major strengths of RDA is the global reach of the network. Members come from 145 different countries and plenary meetings rotate around the continents. This diversity of collaboration is required to address global challenges and broker solutions that work for a manifold of different contexts. Richer outputs and standards occur as a result.

RDA’s plenary meetings provide an opportunity for this diverse collaboration to make rapid progress in all areas of its work – initiating and joining new working groups, sharing interim results from in-progress work, identifying areas of overlap and synergy, and presenting completed work and successful stories of its adoption. The outputs developed by RDA groups all aim to ensure that data can be shared and reused, and made more open, in global and cross-domain environments. This supports RDA’s vision and mission:

  • Researchers and innovators can openly share and re-use data across technologies, disciplines and countries to address the grand challenges of society.
  • RDA’s members build the social and technical bridges to enable open sharing and reuse of data.