About
In 2021, the need to create a European legal entity to support the RDA activities was identified. This organization, the Research Data Alliance Association, was founded as a non-profit international organization under Belgian Law (AISBL), with the overall goal to support the RDA activities in Europe, and to take a part in the global RDA development.
This Association is built on the strong commitment of the European member states, individuals, organisations, and the European Commission to the mission of the Research Data Alliance. Additionally, it draws from the rich history and successes of the European Union funded RDA projects, as well as the engaged regions in Europe
See also: RDA Europe Gender Action Plan.
RDA Europe Strategic Priorities
The Research Data Alliance (RDA) is a global initiative to build the social and technical infrastructure to enable open sharing and re-use of data. As the RDA has strong European level engagement and interest, RDA Europe was founded in 2021 in Belgium as a Non-profit organisation (Research Data Alliance Association AISBL) to foster and coordinate the RDA activity in the continental level in Europe.
The mission of RDA Europe is to “Inspire, cultivate and support European communities, organisations and individuals to develop and implement globally agreeable solutions to enable open sharing and re-use of data through the Research Data Alliance (RDA).” RDA Europe is governed by and operates according to the current Guiding Principles of the global Research Data Alliance, namely: Openness, Consensus, Inclusivity, Harmonization, Community-driven, and Nonprofit and technology-neutral.
RDA Europe is built on the strong commitment of the European member states, individuals, organisations, and the European Commission on the mission of the Research Data Alliance. It draws from the rich history and successes of the European Union funded RDA projects, as well as the engaged National Networks in the region of Europe. Since 2021, the RDA Europe has been engaged in building up its organisation and developing the initial work plan, as well as obtaining new initiatives and resources for its operation.
The strategy is divided to 3 goals, with long and overarching perspective, and 4 strategic priorities for the current time period.
Read the RDA Europe Strategic Plan.
Current Projects
RDA TIGER is a support services project for RDA Working Groups, coordinated by the RDA-A in Belgium. The project also includes contributions from CODATA, Netherlands eScienceCenter, and DANS. For the RDA members, this new project provides many potential support services:
- For upcoming WGs, the project can provide help for forming the WG, such as finding WG members with new active global engagement and landscape analysis service, helping to disseminate WG ideas widely, practical help with case statement preparation, and output definition;
- For ongoing WGs, the project can help with close facilitation and organization services, leading to much less workload on the WG members and chairs, who can concentrate more on providing their expertise. Other direct services include communication, writing and editing, and output development services, as well as providing limited grants for output testing, development, travel and even external consultancy services;
- For ending and finished WGs, the RDA TIGER will provide help on last-mile development and writing, output finalization and adoption, guidance on potential standardization pathways and help with the (upcoming) RDA Maintenance Facility maintained by DANS in Netherlands.
Other Activities
Additionally, the Association and its Board of Trustees are currently developing the strategic plan of the Association, including activity and engagement plans, and a comprehensive membership suite for interested parties.
The RDA Association is currently involved in the below projects, all funded by the European Commission.
EOSC FUTURE is the main project currently developing the European Open Science Cloud initiative. The RDA has been particularly active in the RDA Calls preparation and development, as well as supporting the EOSC FUTURE-RDA connectivity.
WorldFAIR is an international project building interoperable set of 11 disciplinary and cross-disciplinary case studies to advance implementation of the FAIR principles and, in particular, to improve interoperability and reusability of digital research objects, including data. The RDA Association is mostly involved in the project in the communications and engagement activities, including building connectivity to relevant RDA Working and Interest Groups.
The WorldFAIR Communication Toolkit is available at https://worldfair-project.eu/communication-toolkit/.
FAIR-Impact works in creating practical implementation of the FAIR principles starting with integrated use cases on four scientific domains. The project will identify practices, policies, tools and technical specifications to guide researchers, repository managers, research performing organisations, policy makers and citizen scientists towards a FAIR data management cycle. See here for more on FAIR Impact and where RDA is active.
RDA Europe Staff & Contacts
Alex Delipalta
Director of Operations
Twitter: @DelipaltaAlex
Projects: WorldFAIR, RDA TIGER, FAIR IMPACT
Peter Szeredi
Financial Officer
Projects: none (association)
Matti Heikurinen
Research Project Portfolio Manager
Projects: RDA TIGER, FAIR IMPACT
