Recommendations and Supporting Outputs-related processes and submission guidelines
RDA Recommendations
Submission Requirements
The Working Group (WG) should submit the Recommendation using the Add New button in the group’s Outputs area. Once the submission has 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 title and abstract
- A brief impact statement (see 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, including the name of the WG and/or additional 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. - Primary Domain and Field of Expertise, RDA Pathways and Group Technology focus
- 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).
- A DOI will be assigned by the RDA Secretariat
RDA Recommendations Endorsement Process
- Community Review: The Secretariat opens the Recommendation for review by the RDA community which is visible on the home page of the Member Portal. As with WG and IG Statements of Work, 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:
- Provide an outline of how and why the recommendations were adopted – what was the problem and need, why did you adopt this specific RDA recommendation?
- Do you plan to continue to use the Recommendations?
- Did you need to modify the Recommendations for your use and how easy was it to adopt?
- Can you give an estimate of how much time/effort you have spent on the adoption activity so far? Is there still more to do?
- 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.
- Publication: The Recommendations will be published in the RDA Outputs and Recommendations Catalogue. Before publishing, the RDA Secretariat will prepare a cover page with the Zenodo metadata and send it to the author/submitter for approval.
WG Maintenance and retirement plan
Once the Recommendations have been endorsed the WG co-chairs will need to provide Secretariat with a maintenance and retirement plan which refers to how the WG plans to maintain the Recommendations once the group ends (e.g.: the maintenance will be taken over by an Interest Group, an external organisation, etc.). For further details please refer to the completing a group page.
N.B. All revised/updated outputs are required to go through the full review process again, to uphold the standard for endorsement.
RDA Supporting Outputs
Submission Requirements
The Group should submit the supporting output using the Add New button in the group’s Outputs area. Once the submission has been received the Secretariat will mint a DOI for the output, based on the information provided, and start the endorsement process, 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
- A title and abstract
- 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
- Primary Domain and Field of Expertise, RDA Pathways and Group Technology focus
- Licensing information (as applicable): For RDA Outputs, the default license is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
- A DOI will be assigned by the RDA Secretariat
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. Before publishing, the RDA Secretariat will prepare a cover page with the Zenodo metadata and send it to the author/submitter for approval. N.B. All revised/updated outputs are required to go through the full review process again, to uphold the standard for endorsement.
RDA Regional Outputs
Submission Requirements
Regional Outputs are useful solutions from RDA Partner Regions that have been generated by national level activities, aligned with and connected to the RDA and of value to the global community. The Group should submit the supporting output using the Add New button in the group’s Outputs area. Once the submission has been received the Secretariat will mint a DOI for the output, based on the information provided, and start the endorsement process, a 1-month community review period. During this period, co-chairs are expected to monitor and respond to any comments made by the community.
Criteria for the Definition of a Regional Output
- The output has been produced by an RDA Partner Region (see the Regional Membership page for regional engagement categories).
- The output should be clearly aligned with RDA activities and international community benefits evident. Furthermore it should not overlap or compete with a global RDA recommendation and / or supporting output. If RDA groups working on similar areas can be identified, this output should be complementary.
- Is openly available to access, use, adopt, etc.
- Can be in another language: i.e. contributing to multilingualism & inclusivity. It is not a translation of an RDA Group Supporting Output as that is a multilingual version of an official RDA output. Nor is it an adoption story, as that is not an output.
- Undergoes community review so there can be feedback from the global community, as well as awareness raising. Where the output is not in English, the community will be provided with an automatic translation to aid comprehension and provide a brief summary of the method, but not as an official document or translation.
- Must be aligned with and adhere to the RDA Guiding Principles.
Regional Outputs Submission Guidelines
Please refer to the Supporting Outputs guidelines above.
What happens after submission?
Regional Outputs, like 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 Regional Outputs will be published in Zenodo and will appear in the RDA Outputs and Recommendations Catalogue. N.B. All revised/updated outputs are required to go through the full review process again, to uphold the standard for endorsement.
Before publishing, the RDA Secretariat will prepare a cover page with the Zenodo metadata and send it to the author/submitter for approval. If the output is in a language other than English, you will need to provide, in the Abstract, an English summary of the methodology used to ensure adherence to the RDA guiding principles is clear.
Other Outputs
‘Other’ Outputs are used to describe resources that have been published on the RDA website following a request by a WG, IG or CoP, but have received no level of endorsement. They could include workshop reports, published articles, survey results, etc.
Other Outputs should be added to the group’s outputs page using the Add New button. If the Other Output is published in Zenodo, please request for it to be included in the Research Data Alliance Related Documents community. The RDA Secretariat is happy to showcase Other Outputs; please contact secretariat[at]rda-foundation.org
Depositing RDA Documents in Zenodo
1. Research Data Alliance
Description: Contains official documents published by the Research Data Alliance (www.rd-alliance.org)
Curation Policy: This collection contains official documents published by the Research Data Alliance (www.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.
RDA Policy & Norms for RDA Outputs
For information about contributing to and using RDA recommendations and outputs please visit the dedicated page.
N.B. All revised/updated outputs are required go through the full review process again, to uphold the standard for endorsement.