Wellcome Trust supports the Research Data Alliance

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Wellcome Trust supports the Research Data Alliance
20 Dec 2018

Wellcome Trust supports the Research Data Alliance

We are delighted to announce an agreement between Wellcome and the Research Data Alliance Foundation. Wellcome will make a financial contribution to the Foundation in 2018 and 2019 as a sign of their support and commitment to the aims and goals of the Research Data Alliance and their broader dedication to open research.

Since the launch of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), Wellcome has participated in RDA and actively engaged as a member of the RDA Funders Forum, in recent years contributing to the Birds of a Feather (BoF) meetings organised by the Funders at RDA Plenary Meetings.

Wellcome’s  mission is to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive. It is a global charitable foundation, both politically and financially independent, which works to take on big health challenges, campaign for better science, and help everyone get involved with science and health research. 

As a funder, Wellcome is committed to ensuring that the outputs of research – including publications, datasets, software and materials – can be accessed and used in ways that will ensure the greatest benefit to health and society.  It has been a leading champion and advocate for open access to research publications and research data sharing and is committed to working in partnership to realise the potential of open research. 

RDA offers a platform to help funders securely and sustainably deliver on these goals – bringing together and mobilising a global community of research data professionals to create solutions and best practices that realise the full potential of open science and open data, and ensure research data are findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable (FAIR). 

In the words of David Carr, Programme Manager for Open Research at Wellcome

“Wellcome is delighted to support the Research Data Alliance in its mission to build the social and technical bridges to enable the open sharing and re-use of data.  In just a few short years, RDA has established itself as a key component of the international research data landscape, and an effective platform to bring together bright and committed people from all around the world to unlock the potential of research data to address global challenges.” 

Wellcome, together with other RDA Funders, enable a professional and sustainable business in order to support the core work of RDA Working and Interest groups.

Hilary Hanahoe, RDA Secretary General, said

“Wellcome’s commitment to the Research Data Alliance is a very significant demonstration of the organisation’s trust and value of RDA, but more importantly of the essential work that the RDA community is performing through its Working and Interest groups. We are very grateful to Wellcome for supporting us.”


#BoF Meetings - Research Funders on the Topic of Open Research and Data Management”, Montreal Sept 2017, and during two BoF sessions held in Berlin (March 2018) “Interest Group for Funders and Stakeholders on Open Research and Data Management Policies”. In November 2018, a BoF meeting in Botswana (P12) entitled. Research Data Management and Sharing in Low and Middle-Income Countries