And the winners are…. Meet RDA Europe New National Nodes

RDA Europe is pleased to announce the results of the first call for new RDA Europe national nodes. We were delighted to receive ten applications, four of which were very strong and have been selected to support the mission and work of the Research Data Alliance in Europe. These four organisations will join the current nodes in Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. Here’s who you need to know and what they will focus on.

Austria

The Austrian node will be run by RDA Austria which is an association gathering individual members from various Austrian research institutions, as well as institutional members. The priorities in the workplan are to mitigate the full range of technical, organisational, and cultural challenges that currently discourage open and effective sharing of publicly funded research data assets. RDA Austria strives for orderly growth and would like to go beyond the academic field and specifically address people from public and industrial data centres, domain scientists as well as representatives from funding organisations and politics.

The primary goal of RDA Austria is not to create a platform just for meetings and knowledge exchange, but rather to go for more practical approaches. The node will initiate adoption projects to disseminate outputs from RDA global initiatives on a national level, while at the same time ensuring that input collected at the national level is fed into the global RDA initiatives. RDA Austria also wants to avoid replication of existing projects and initiatives. It will organize events and trainings that promote best practices in research data management, effectively providing an incubation space for the development of shared services and common standards, including policy development, data management planning and infrastructure interoperability requirements.

Denmark

The Danish node will be organised as an activity within the National Forum for Research Data Management (DM Forum). DM Forum gathers key personnel from all eight Danish universities, the Royal Danish Library and the Danish National Archives. DM Forum is supported by Danish e-Infrastructure Consortium (DeIC) and Denmark’s Electronic Research Library (DEFF).  The Danish National Archives will provide project management for the node activities. The main priorities in the workplan for the Danish node are to:

• Encourage and support the uptake of RDA recommendations and outputs in Denmark
• Foster active engagement in RDA Working Groups and Interest Groups by Danish researchers and research support organisations
• Coordinate with relevant Nordic and European organisations on RDA related results and activities

Research communities in Denmark will on the one hand gain valuable awareness of availability of RDA products, and on the other hand become encouraged to present challenges to the RDA community and collaborate with peers contribute to the solutions. Anchoring the activities in the DM Forum will ensure a broad national engagement in RDA. Additionally, the Danish node will be aligned with the national research data management activities in general as well as with the national strategies for Open Science and RDM.

Portugal

The Portuguese node will be run by INESC TEC (Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science), a research institute associated to the University of Porto. INESC TEC provides the logistic support for the node while the InfoLab group manages the communication and the decision-making processes There are 8 organisations involved in the node and the Portuguese funding agency, FCT.  The priorities of the RDA in Portugal node workplan are first the construction of a Portuguese RDA community that will accommodate individuals and organisations, with a special focus on disciplinary infrastructures, and second the collaboration with FCT, the national funding agency, in the design of a sustainable, lightweight RDA interface model.

The node activities will build a Portuguese community and thereby foster strong international connections. Node members will be able to follow Portuguese initiatives, be aware of international results and adopt them. Equally important, the node will weave an image of the data needs in the Portuguese community, which will be incredibly valuable to inform the initiatives of the FCT. These needs may also be a relevant source of information for future  RDA strategy.

I look forward to seeing, at a larger scale, what I have observed over and over in the small research groups where I have worked with research data. When data creators sense that solutions in data management, besides solving immediate administrative problems, value their data and treat them as first-class objects, they can be generous with their time and provide surprising insights. I look forward to those insights! Cristina Ribeiro, INESC TEC, University of Porto

Slovenia

The Slovenian Node will be run by the Social Science Data Archives (ADP) that was established in 1997 as an organizational unit of the Social Sciences Research Institute at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. The purpose of the RDA Node Slovenia is to act as a long-term central contact point between the Research Data Alliance and data practitioners, funding organizations, research agencies and other relevant stakeholders in Slovenia. The aims of the Node are focused towards facilitating the implementation of the National Strategy of Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data in Slovenia 2015-2020 and the Action Plan, with some specific emphasis related to the coordination of the infrastructure development based on internationally recognised standards, e.g. CoreTrustSeal (CTS), and to the development of journal policies to enhance a culture of data sharing.

The National Strategy of Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data in Slovenia 2015-2020 and the Action Plan for the implementation of the national open access strategy already set national development priorities. However, there is no concrete programme of activity on the governmental side to implement the priorities in practice. The activities of the RDA Node Slovenia will support the implementation of the action plan by addressing key elements where extended coordination among national players is needed. The starting point will be identification of the areas where such coordination can profit from the alignment with international RDA professional communities’ tools and recommendations. The key areas addressed will be coordination of research data infrastructure services in delivering the common layer of services to improve interoperability and uneven support of scientific community needs regarding specifying DMP and open data access.