Research Data Alliance: Research Data
Sharing without barriers
Herman Stehouwer, [email protected], Max Planck for
Psycholinguistics, 0031-619258815
Leif Laaksonen, [email protected], CSC
Peter Wittenburg, [email protected], Max Planck for Psycholinguistics
Keywords: research data; interoperability; working group; organisational
members
Abstract
The Research Data Alliance facilitates in the implementation of technologies,
practice, and connections that make data work interoperable across barriers.
The Research Data Alliance aims to accelerate and facilitate research data
sharing and exchange. The work of the Research Data Alliance is primarily
undertaken through its working groups. Participation in working groups and
interest groups, starting new working groups, and attendance at the twice-yearly
plenary meetings is open to all.
Introduction
Data sharing and integration, across cultures, scales, and technologies of diverse
and sometimes very large data is required to tackle society’s grand challenges.
The research data alliance (RDA) drives and implements the social and technical
bridges that make this data sharing possible. The chosen approach is bottom-up
and interdisciplinary.
The RDA had its international launch in Gothenburg in March 2013 and its
second meeting in Washington, D.C., September 16th to 18th, 2013. The third
plenary will take place in Dublin, March 26th to 28th, 2014. These plenaries
provide opportunities for individuals as well as for member organizations to
collaborate globally and promote international data interoperability.
Guiding Principles of RDA
The goal of the Research Data Alliance is to accelerate international data-driven
innovation and discovery by facilitating research data sharing and exchange.
This is achieved through the development, adoption, and deployment of
infrastructure, policy, practice, standards, and other deliverables. The emphasis
of RDA is the adoption and deployment, rather than development new
infrastructure that may be beyond the normal timeframe of RDA activity.
The RDA Vision is: Researchers and innovators openly share data across
technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the grand challenges of
society.
The RDA Mission is: RDA Builds the social and technical bridges that enable open
sharing of data.
To effectively facilitate the achievement of this goal, members of the RDA adopt
the following Guiding Principles that underlie the conduct and evolution of the
organization.
1. Openness
2. Consensus
3. Balance
4. Harmonization
5. Community-driven
6. Non-profit
Individual Participation
Participation in the RDA as an individual member is open to anyone that agrees
to the principles. RDA members come together in working groups and interest
groups where they tackle problems in order to enhance and facilitate global data
sharing. RDA has a broad, committed membership of individuals and
organizations dedicated to improving data exchange.
Individual members may participate through:
 The RDA website which contains the working and interest group areas as
well as the mailing lists.
 Interest groups, which a clusters of members around a particular topic.
Interest groups may result in working groups.
 Working groups, which carry out the work. Working groups focus on a
very specific task, which is described in their case statement.
 The plenary meeting, which convenes twice a year
What data sharing problem are you trying to solve? Get involved by becoming an
RDA Member and signing up to the Working / Interest Group(s).
Organizational Participation
Participation in the RDA is also open to organizations. Organizational members
are critical to the success of RDA. RDA’s organizational members will be
regularly briefed on developments in data interoperability and will have equally
regular opportunity to provide feedback on activity and suggestions on next
steps.
Organizations that join RDA recognize their future health and growth is
dependent on realizing value from research data. Unlocking value from research
data is the key competitive advantage in the 21st century. RDA and its members
are at the heart of building a new economic model.
Full Steam Ahead
RDA creates the context for interdisciplinary collaboration. Everyone will benefit
from a global mechanism for research data exchange. One group, one discipline,
or one country cannot create such a mechanism. RDA provides a framework
through which the work of many is levered in the service of a common vision for
the free and effective movement of research data. People and organizations that
engage through RDA will build the global exchange systems for research data
component by component.
RDA’s methodology is to realize the vision through working groups that address
components in 12 to 18-month projects that allow for regular statements of
“Well that’s done! What’s next? Let’s get on with it.”
Acknowledgements
At the present time, the RDA Secretariat, Events and outreach are being
supported by a founding set of sponsors including the European Union
Commission through RDA Europe, the U.S. National Science Foundation through
RDA / US, and the Australian Government through the Australian National Data
Service.
In the medium to long term, the RDA will develop a sustainable economic model
that will support its Secretariat, Events and other efforts. The development and
implementation of this model will be the responsibility of the RDA Council.
References
Vitae
Herman Stehouwer
Dr.ir. Herman Stehouwer has a background in computer science and
computational linguistics. At the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics he
has been responsible for the technical aspects of the CLARIN search
infrastructure for CLARIN-D as well as having the responsibility for a number of
TLA software projects (such as the VLO).
In the last year he has been involved with setting up the RDA. Now that the RDA
is moving to a steady state he is the Europe representative in the RDA Secretariat
next to his regular RDA and RDA/Europe work.
Leif Laaksonen
Dr. Leif Laaksonen is a Director at CSC. He joined CSC in 1985 and was previously
Development Manager. Leif Laaksonen is the Project Director for the RDA
Europe project. Laaksonen contributed to the startup of FP7 projects PRACE,
EGI_DS (European Grid Initiative Design Study) and was the Project Director for
the e-IRGSP2 (e-Infrastructure Reflection Group Support Programme 2) project.
He was the Chair of the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (e-IRG) 2007 – 2010.
Peter Wittenburg
After finishing the Diplom-Ingenieur Degree in Electrical Engineering at the
Technical University Berlin in 1974 with computer science and digital signal
processing as main topics, Wittenburg started working as research assistant
setting up a center for control computation at TUB. In 1976 he became head of
the technical group at the newly founded Max-Planck-Institute for
Psycholinguistics.
In 2011, Wittenburg became the head of the new unit called The Language
Archive that was built as a collaboration between Max-Planck-Society, BerlinBrandenburg-Academy of Sciences and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.
Since 1988 he is member of the IT Advisory board of Max Planck Society,
had/has leading roles in European research and data infrastructure initiatives
and was member of the High Level Expert Group which produced the “Riding the
Wave” report on scientific data.