RDA and European Commission-funded projects
The mapping of Research Data Alliance (RDA) Working Groups (WGs) against current and future Horizon Europe (HE)-funded projects highlights a strong complementarity between their respective activity domains, reflecting close alignment between the RDA community and EOSC- and Open Science-related initiatives.
This section ‘Landscape analysis on the value of RDA Outputs to EOSC‘ report focuses on the relevance of RDA WGs to Horizon Europe (HE) projects related to EOSC and OS activities. To better understand the relationship between the RDA community and the HE projects, we mapped and analysed the activity domains of RDA WGs to the current HE projects. This mapping not only provides an overview of the different activity domains of the RDA community and the HE-funded projects, but also highlights a close link between RDA’s activity domains and HE funded-projects, as well as the complementarity of RDA’s field of action with the ambitions of future HE funded-projects. Annex 2 of the report contains further information on the methodology used for this section as well as more detail on the analysis results.
The report presents a condensed analysis of the activity domains of RDA WGs and their alignment with HE-funded projects. Each subsection follows the same structure, first with a short description of the five identified domains of activity derived from EOSC operational objectives (these domains are Scalability, Federation, Policy evolution, FAIR compliance and Wider user base), followed by information on the overall relevance of RDA WGs activities to HE projects, and then a more detailed description of each domain of activity.
In this section RDA WGs and all HE-funded projects are affiliated to one domain based on their main activity. For further details on the overall methodology used in this section see Annex 2 of the full report.
The mapping of RDA WGs to HE-funded projects based on activity domains can be explored further via a Kumu.io map. The overall mapping can be seen below in Figure 2. The activity domains are shown in yellow, while the RDA WGs are colored in grey, and the HE funded-projects, related to EOSC and OS, are respectively colored in purple and cyan.
This combined, multi-perspective approach demonstrates the added value of collaboration across these ecosystems. The analysis also enables the identification of future activity domains for HE-funded projects, based on key EOSC and ERA policy roadmaps. Overall, the findings show that RDA Working Groups play a practical role in supporting the development and implementation of EOSC and Open Science, producing outputs that are directly relevant to both current and future European research initiatives.
The analysis of the impact of RDA WG activities and outputs can be explored via the kumu.io platform visualisation below.
🔻 Click, scroll and zoom to discover how RDA WGs support EOSC SRIA Implementation Challenges 🔻
Summary of analysis
The mapping of RDA WGs with the current and future HE-funded projects reveals a considerable complementarity based on their activity domains, reflecting a close relationship between RDA community and EOSC and OS-related HE projects and ambitions.
The mapping of RDA WGs with the current and future HE-funded projects reveals a considerable complementarity based on their activity domains, reflecting a close relationship between RDA community and EOSC and OS-related HE projects and ambitions.
The analysis shows that, even if the RDA WGs address the same activity domains as current HE-funded projects, their approaches can differ, providing a broader view of the domain and its various components. While RDA WGs focus their activities mainly on digital objects, INFRAEOSC projects approach the domain from a services perspective, whereas ERA-OS projects concentrate on impact and assessment approaches, by producing evidence-base for policymakers. This triangular approach across all domains highlights the complementarity between the two ecosystems: RDA community and HE work programmes.
By using this methodology to map the activities of RDA WGs with current HE-funded projects, we are able to anticipate future activity domains of the HE-funded projects based on roadmap documents. Indeed, the future activity domains of INFRAEOSC projects were estimated based on the EOSC development phase described in the EOSC partnership report, while the upcoming activity domains of ERA-OS projects were projected from the forthcoming ERA Policy Agenda 2025-2027.
This analysis reveals that the RDA community and specifically its WGs are concerned with the activities related to the development and implementation of EOSC and OS practically, and that they also produce (and will continue to produce) outputs that have the potential to be directly implementable by both current projects and future projects.
Find out more about the value of RDA to EOSC
Research Data Alliance facilitation of Targeted International working Groups for EOSC-related Research solutions (RDA TIGER)
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