RDA/ EOSC Future - New Projects Onboarded!
We are delighted to announce five new projects that are funded under the RDA Open Calls programme in the European EOSC Future project. The projects are European-based, and disciplinary focused, diverse in aims and goals, but all draw on the RDA outputs, and working on different aspects of data sharing and technical solutions for open data in their disciplines.
A bit of context
The purpose of the programme is to support the creation of diverse disciplinary data-sharing solutions and initiatives and to bring RDA's community closer to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). EOSC Future's goal is to implement a functioning EOSC Core and RDA's role is to ensure alignment to other global initiatives and to help develop tools and standards to enable the accessibility of EOSC. See more here for RDA in EOSC Future and the other awardees, including the RDA Ambassadors Network.
The new projects awardees are described below, watch this space for their first results and when you come to the P20 in Gothenburg you can meet them there in person!
Who are they?
"Foster
ing the uptake of RDA indicators in Systems Biomedicine as a measure for model quality and FAIRness within the COMBINE community" This is a cross-community project aiming to reuse the RDA FAIR indicators on simulation experiments in COmputational MOdeling in BIology NEtwork (COMBINE) standards. The project will deliver (1) FAIR model indicators with accompanying guidelines and (2) a semi-automatic FAIR evaluation tool to the community.
The work is grounded on the work of the RDA FAIR Data Maturity Model and Dr. Balaur and Prof. Waltemath are closely involved with a number of RDA Groups.
Dr Leyla Jael Castro and Dr Olga Giraldo, ZB MED Information Centre for Life Sciences, Germany
"Machine-actionable Software Management Plans" Although targeting the life sciences community, most of the elements of the ELIXIR SMPs are domain agnostic and could be used by other communities as well. DMPs and SMPs can be presented as text-based documents, sometimes guided by a set of questions corresponding to key points related to the lifecycle of either data or software. The RDA DMP Common Standards working group defined a maDMP to overcome limitations of text-based documents.
The project has strong links with RDA groups, starting from the fact that Dr. Castro is one of the chairs of the “Principles of the FAIR for Research Software” (FAIR4RS) WG. In addition to being guided by the FAIR4RD principles, the project expands DMP Common Standards WG recommendations to software.
Dr Hugh 
Shanahan, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom
"Operationalising the RDA/CODATA Schools for Research Data Science (SRDS) activities to add value to EOSC" The SRDS has developed a methodology for delivery of training of foundational data science skills for Early Career Researchers and data steward instructor training. The curriculum for the former is a formal output of the RDA and the data steward training was developed with the RDA. The delivery has been effective and can be scaled up to provide training that will be key for the EOSC community. However these activities must be operationalised; documentation developed, materials integrated with EOSC Future materials with input from Data in Action Projects and software deployed to manage relationships with stakeholders of the SRDS.
The project has a direct link with the RDA/CODATA Summer Schools in Data Science and Cloud Computing in the Developing World WG.
REPOPSI, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia
"TRUST-ification and FAIR-ification of an open repository for research instruments in psychology: REPOPSI's adoption of RDA outputs", The project focuses on building the Repository’s technologies needed to improve its adherence especially to the principles of User Focus, Sustainability, Findability, and Interoperability. Dissemination and community activities are designed to promote further uptake of RDA outputs. The project builds on earlier contributions to RDA certification of Digital Repositories Interest Group.
Dr Anca Monica Marin, Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romania
"EU FAR – EU Funds by Area Results" The project will investigate the use of RDA standards and principles to support the creation of a multi-purpose knowledge source about EU funding at a very fine-grained (individual commune) level. This is expected to demonstrate the relevance of RDA among new user communities and use cases, e.g., policy-making and joint academia-governance interactions at a local level.