Recommendations & Outputs

RDA Outputs are the technical and social infrastructure solutions developed by RDA Working Groups or Interest Groups that enable data sharing, exchange, and interoperability.

These Outputs have an important impact in two areas: solving problems, and incorporation and/or adoption in infrastructure environments by individuals, projects and organisations. As an organisation, RDA’s goal is to expand awareness and adoption of these Outputs, and hence their impact, within all regions of the world. RDA Outputs are products of the respective Working or Interest Group and should be demonstrably developed and endorsed by the group. Each Output should have the respective Working or Interest Group listed as an author where appropriate.

RDA Outputs are classified as RDA Recommendations (official, endorsed results of RDA Groups), Supporting Outputs (useful solutions from our RDA Working and Interest Groups), Regional Outputs (useful solutions from RDA Partner Regions that have been generated by national level activities) or other Outputs – more information can be found at https://www.rd-alliance.org/what-are-recommendations-and-outputsThey are all listed below and can be searched according to their focus, scientific domain, or by status using the filters on the right. Filters can be combined, too (if more than one filter is selected, results sum up).

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List of Outputs

Interest Group Other Output

Bridging the Data Discovery Gap: User-Centric Recommendations for Research Data Repositories

Authors: Mingfang Wu, Felicitas Löffler, Brigitte Mathiak, Fotis Psomopoulos, Uwe Schindler, Amir Aryani, Jordi BODERA SEMPERE, Antica Culina, Andreas Czerniak, Christopher Erdmann, Kathleen Gregory, Nick Juty, Allyson Lister, Ying-Hsang Liu, Samantha Pearman-Kanza

Despite substantial investment in research data infrastructure, data discovery remains a fundamental challenge in the era of open science. The proliferation of repositories and the rapid growth of deposited data have not resulted in a corresponding improvement in data findability. Researchers continue to struggle to find data that are relevant to their work, revealing a…

March 10, 2026

Interest Group Other Output

An analysis of crosswalks from research data schemas to Schema.org

Authors: Mingfang Wu, Stephen Richard, Chantelle Verhey, Leyla Jael Castro, Baptiste Cecconi, Nick Juty

The increased number of data repositories has greatly increased the availability of open data. To enable broad discovery and access to research dataset, some data repositories have begun leveraging the web architecture by embedding structured metadata markup in dataset web landing pages using vocabularies from Schema.org and extensions. This paper aims to examine metadata interoperability…

March 10, 2026

Interest Group Other Output

Data Discovery Paradigms: User Requirements and Recommendations for Data Repositories

Authors: Mingfang Wu, Fotis Psomopoulos, Siri Jodha Khalsa, Anita de Waard

As data repositories make more data openly available it becomes challenging for researchers to find what they need either from a repository or through web search engines. This study attempts to investigate data users’ requirements and the role that data repositories can play in supporting data discoverability by meeting those requirements. We collected 79 data…

March 10, 2026

Working Group Recommendation

PRO4RS WG Recommendations

Review Status: Preparing for Council Review

Authors: Michelle Barker, Jeremy Cohen, Pedro Hernandez Serrano, Daniel S. Katz, Kim Martin, Dan Rudmann, Hugh Shanahan

The PRO4RS WG produced outputs to support research performing organisations worldwide to develop, align, and implement policies on research software, as a key component of FAIR and open science/scholarship. It was a joint initiative of the Research Software Alliance (ReSA) and the Research Data Alliance (RDA). The PRO4RS recommendations are: The work of the PRO4RS…

February 3, 2026

Working Group Recommendation

Scientific Knowledge Graphs Interoperability Framework (SKG-IF): Enabling Data Exchange for SKGs

Review Status: Endorsed

Authors: Andrea Mannocci, Silvio Peroni

The SKG-IF aims to facilitate seamless exchange of information across diverse Scientific Knowledge Graphs (SKGs), thereby reducing duplication of effort, enriching individual graphs, and establishing SKGs as a central pillar of Open Science scholarly communication. This report outlines the work undertaken in this direction by the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Working Group on the Scientific…

December 12, 2025

Interest Group Other Output

The TRUST Principles for digital repositories

Authors: Dawei Lin, Jonathan Crabtree, Ingrid Dillo, Robert Downs, Rorie Edmunds, David Giaretta, Hervé L’Hours, Wim HUGO, Reyna Broadhurst, Varsha Khodiyar, Maryann Martone, Mustapha Mokrane, Vivek Navale, Jonathan Petters, Barbara Sierman, Martina Stockhause, John Westbrook

As information and communication technology has become pervasive in our society, we are increasingly dependent on both digital data and repositories that provide access to and enable the use of such resources. Repositories must earn the trust of the communities they intend to serve and demonstrate that they are reliable and capable of appropriately managing…

December 9, 2025

Working Group Other Output

Geographies of Trust: AI, Biomedicine, and the Next Era of Federated and Visiting Data Models

Authors: Patricia Buendia, Seonyoung Kim, Natalie Meyers, Francis P. Crawley, Ronit Purian, Gavin Farrell

This report examines the rapidly evolving landscape of biomedical research platforms that facilitate secure, privacy-preserving access to sensitive datasets—such as genomic sequences and clinical records—without the need to move, download, or replicate data across multiple locations. These platforms adopt models such as Data Visitation and Federation, which enable computational tools to move to the data—allowing…

November 18, 2025

Working Group Supporting Output

Adding Data Visitation Language to an IRB protocol

Review Status: Endorsed

Authors: Patricia Buendia, Seonyoung Kim

Adding Data Visitation (DV) language to an IRB protocol requires placing the description within the sections that address data handling, privacy protections, security, and external data access. Although IRB protocol templates vary across institutions (e.g., HRP-503 for biomedical studies, HRP-583 for social/behavioral studies, HRP-593 for drug/device trials), all templates share common core sections where DV…

November 17, 2025

Working Group Supporting Output

Adding Data Visitation language to ICFs

Review Status: Endorsed

Authors: Patricia Buendia, Seonyoung Kim

Incorporating Data Visitation language into an Informed Consent Form (ICF) requires clear, non-technical language that explains the concept and, importantly, how it benefits the participant by protecting their privacy. This document contains instructions and helpful information on how to do so including proposed language for additions to the ICF, structured to fit within a standard…

November 17, 2025

Working Group Supporting Output

System Security Assessment Plan Template

Review Status: Endorsed

Authors: Patricia Buendia, Lars Eklund, David Molik, Natalie Meyers

The  System Security Assessment Plan Template is a standardized framework developed by the EOSC-Future/RDA Artificial Intelligence and Data Visitation Working Group  (AIDV-WG) and others to evaluate and approve the security of data visitation systems (i.e., platforms that enable controlled, temporary access to sensitive research data without transfer). The template requires an outline of team composition,…

November 17, 2025

Working Group Other Output

PRO4RS WG Final Report

Authors: Michelle Barker, Jeremy Cohen, Pedro Hernandez Serrano, Daniel S. Katz, Kim Martin, Dan Rudmann, Hugh Shanahan

The PRO4RS WG produced outputs to support research performing organisations worldwide to develop, align, and implement policies on research software, as a key component of FAIR and open science/scholarship. It was a joint initiative of the Research Software Alliance (ReSA) and the Research Data Alliance (RDA). This report outlines the rationale for this work and its achievements,…

October 12, 2025

Working Group Recommendation

Best Practice Recommendations for improving FAIR data maturity in wind energy

Review Status: Endorsed

Authors: Sarah Barber, Sirko Schindler, Catherine Jones, Pablo Rodríguez, Yuriy Marykovskiy

The RDA Wind Energy Community Standards Working Group has created these new best practice recommendations for improving FAIR data maturity in wind energy in practice. It addresses key challenges in the sector, which are to foster data exchange and re-use as well as to create more value from data by increasing the efficiency of data…

October 3, 2025