RDA Recommendations
If you have any questions about what to provide, please contact enquiries[at]rd-alliance.org
Submission Requirements
The Working Group (WG) should provide the Recommendation and all required information outlined below to the Secretariat in a non-proprietary, open-file and electronic format. Once all Recommendation submission requirements have been received from the WG, The Secretariat will mint a DOI for the Recommendation, based on the information provided, and start the endorsement process, which starts with a 1-month community review period. During this period, co-chairs are expected to monitor and respond to any comments made by the community.
Required information and documentation:
- The draft Recommendation
- A short description/abstract
- A brief impact statement (see the pages of Endorsed Recommendations for examples, or Secretariat can provide examples).
- An explanation of how the Recommendations contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
See here for a list of the 17 SDGs and please specify which goals, if any, are relevant to the Group’s Recommendations. - Authorship information
This can include the WG itself and/or additional individual authors if relevant. - Licensing information
All RDA Recommendations are under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) and all authors, generators, contributors and users of RDA Recommendations are governed by these licensing regulations. - Metadata
This includes the version, publication date, and other relevant metadata.Maintenance and retirement plan
This refers to how the WG plans to maintain the REcommendation once the group ends (e.g.: the maintenance will be taken over by an Interest Group, an external organisation, etc.). - The names of two adopters who are willing to provide their experience to the RDA Secretariat about their experiences in adopting the Recommendation (the names can be provided during the community review period – see below).
RDA Recommendations Endorsement Process
- Community Review: The Secretariat opens the Recommendation for review by the RDA community by placing it in the RfC box on the home page. As with WG Case Statements and IG Charters, the duration of the community review phase is 1 month. The underlying question for the community is, Does this output help further the RDA mission, and is it consistent with the principles of RDA?
- Organisational Assembly (OA) Commentary: In parallel with the Community Review, the OA is invited to provide an expert commentary on the adoptability of the Recommendation, and whether this Recommendation furthers the RDA mission. Please note that there is no obligation on the OA to provide commentary.
- Adoption report: Secretariat will ask the group chairs to provide contact details for two adopters of the Recommendation. A Secretariat member will then ask the adopters the following questions about their adoption experience: What is the level of adoption at your organisation? (E.g., pilot, production, …) Do you plan to continue to use the
Recommendation? Did you need to modify the Recommendation for your use? Can you give an estimate of how much time/effort you have spent on the adoption so far? What’s your overall experience? (E.g., Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor). Would you do it again? - Council review: Council reviews the OA commentary (if any), adoption report, and community responses, and detects the presence or absence of consensus. In the case of consensus, Council endorses the Recommendation.
RDA Supporting Outputs
Submission Requirements
The group should provide the Supporting Output to the Secretariat in a non-proprietary, open-file and electronic format, together with the following information:
- A title and short description
- UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (An explanation of how the Recommendations contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). See here for a list of the 17 goals and please specify which goals, if any, are relevant to the Group’s Recommendations.)
- Authorship information
- A basic metadata set or other metadata information in RDF/XML Dublin Core (the Secretariat can help with this)
- Licensing information (as applicable): For RDA Outputs, the default license is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) .
Supporting Outputs undergo a community review phase of one month. If there are no significant objections by the end of the Community Review phase, the Supporting Outputs will be published in the RDA Outputs and Recommendations Catalogue.
Depositing RDA Documents in Zenodo
The RDA has two Zenodo Community* collections:
1. Research Data Alliance
Description: Contains official documents published by the Research Data Alliance (rd-alliance.org)
Curation Policy: This collection contains official documents published by the Research Data Alliance (rd-alliance.org). These include Governance documents, Recommendations, and Supporting Outputs. All other RDA-related documents can be included in the “Research Data Alliance – Related Documents” collection.
2. Research Data Alliance – Related Documents
Description: Contains documents that are related to Research Data Alliance (RDA) activities that are not official RDA documents.
Curation Policy: This collection includes documents that are related to Research Data Alliance (RDA) activities, but are not official RDA documents. Examples could include reports and other documents from RDA Working or Interest Group, or Community of Practices, Birds of a Feather (BoFs) that are not meant to be official group outputs, or documents from RDA-related activities such as RDA national groups or initiatives. RDA related events and workshop outputs are also included in this collection. Official RDA documents can be found in the Research Data Alliance collection.
*Community in Zenodo refers to collection of documents.