April Newsletter - Membership Survey, VP17 Recap, Challenges of Curating for Reproducible and FAIR Research and more

RDA Member Survey Individual Membership Fees

The RDA has grown significantly since its inception in 2013, and must now develop a new financial sustainability model, as original sources of seed funding are no longer available or sufficient to keep running the organisation. In December 2020, the RDA Council set up a Financial Sustainability Task Force to openly investigate a series of different financial and business models.

The idea of an individual membership fee is currently being discussed as one of a number of approaches to improving the long-term financial stability of the organization.

Your feedback on RDA individual membership fees is needed so we can properly assess this potential model. As this is both an important and urgent issue for the RDA, we very much appreciate your participation in this short, anonymous survey that will be open until 31 May 2021.

Please learn more and complete the survey at https://www.rd-alliance.org/rda-member-survey-individual-membership-fees.

Virtual Plenary 17 Highlights

Virtual Plenary 17 concluded last week and was attended by more than 800 members. Thank you to all who participated, especially our local organisers, speakers, sponsors and poster presenters. It goes without saying, but the planning and dedication from all these individuals contributed to the success of this event.

For those that did attend, please take a few minutes to complete the VP17 feedback survey available at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RDAVP17.

For those who did not attend (or to remind those that did), here is a brief recap from the week:

• The Plenary opening and the Scottish welcome by the Nevis band
• More than 80 Working and Interest group sessions and Birds of a Feather sessions
• Keynote presentations by Dr Jeni Tennison of Open Data Institute, Susan K Gregorick of National Institute of Health and Professor Richard Gold of McGill University's Centre for Intellectual Property
• An RDA and IDCC unconference comprising eight sessions covering topics including but not limited to topics of FAIR, data stewardship, PIDs and data sharing
• Poster presentations featuring more than 50 attendees - Congratulations to Robert Ulrich, Nina Weisweiler & Michael Witt for their poster ‘re3data - Discovering FAIR enabling repositories’
• An Outputs and Adoption session that included information on Sustainable Development Goals and developments within the Agriculture Community of Practice
• A presentation by Secretary General Hilary Hanahoe, Natalie Harrower and Rebecca Koskela, who discussed Implementation Priorities for 2021 and Financial Sustainability
• A Panel Discussion titled ‘Facilitating Greater Data Reuse: Lessons and Examples from Practice’
• A memorable ceilidh lesson led by RDA VP17 Organising Committee member, Patricia Herterich

Attendees can also access most of the recordings from the event at https://rda-idcc.junolive.co/RDAVP17/Pre-Recordings (due to additional editing, some are taking slightly longer to process).

All VP17 recordings will become available to the community via the RDA's YouTube channel on 28 May.