Community Engagement That Works! Examining tools and success stories of pathways to Engagement in Community-led organisations at a global level

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13 Dec 2022

Community Engagement That Works! Examining tools and success stories of pathways to Engagement in Community-led organisations at a global level

Meeting agenda: 

 

Collaborative session notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15qid1Y5Eij5CY8cVT99z9DHzlyTVUb7q63gp...

 

15 minutes

The RDA Community Section 1:

Connie Clare (RDA Community Development Manager) - Overview of Community Groups 

Beth Knazook (DRI Project Manager, Research Data) - Overview of RDA Calls and Engaging Underrepresented Communities 

 

45 minutes

Engagement Successes and Challenges Section 2:

  • Allyson Lister (RDA / EOSC Future Domain Ambassadors, FAIRsharing Content & Community Lead) (UK)

  • Lindsey Anderson (PNNL, FAIRsharing Omics Community Curator, various RDA WGs) (USA)

  • Francis Crawley, (GPC Alliance, RDA / EOSC Future Domain Ambassador)

  • Ana Slavec (former RDA ambassador for engineering/renewable materials, and InnoRenew CoE) (Europe)

  • Sebastien Denvil (former RDA ambassador for weather and climate, and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) (Europe)

  • Pedro Freitas Mendes (RDA / EOSC Future Domain Ambassador for Catalysis)

  • Mikala Narlock (Director, Data Curation Network) (USA)

  • Kathryn Barker (ARDC) (Australia)

 

30 minutes

Panel and Discussion

Purpose of the panel: come up with a set of concrete ideas for the secretariat to implement with regards to increased usage of RDA outputs within the community, and how to improve awareness of the ways RDA can help (e.g. open calls).

  • Romain David (Professionalise Data Stewardship IG)

  • Fotis E. Psomopoulos (RDA Early Career and Engagement IG)

  • Elli Papadopoulou (Engaging Researchers with Data IG)

  • Allyson Lister (FAIRsharing WG)

Meeting objectives: 

The RDA is one of many grassroots data initiatives run globally that is attempting to broaden engagement in open science and improve practices around research data management.  Its members participate in a variety of community initiatives, some financially supported, aimed at engaging community experts to share RDA outputs and encourage best practice in a variety of research domains and contexts. Instruments such as grants, community partnerships, and national networks are intended as effective and light-weight incentives to work towards these goals.

The purpose of this session is to present a range of global initiatives and engagement activities, and to spotlight what engagement strategies work well and how to improve. It will showcase individuals who are actively, or have been previously, involved in such programmes as well as highlight some RDA groups and their engagement. It will aim to foster discussion of the best ways to support and fund grass-roots expertise, knowledge sharing and participation in the context of open science community actions. 

Existing methods of successful community engagement, as well as any challenges to those successes, will be showcased using the following examples:

  • Open Calls: RDA open calls programmes and Ambassadorships

  • RDA Foundation Community Engagement (Global)

  • FAIRsharing Community Curation Programme 

  • Data Curation Network (US) use case

  • RDA IGs and WGs use cases

Our session will aim to explore which tools are most effective at socialising best practice guidance (such as RDA outputs) and integrating them into community practices; whether certain disciplines profit more from different types of engagement activities; and how the RDA can aim to support its membership in optimising effective engagement strategies, particularly for the global data commons, given that outreach is such an important driver for success. 

 

Take Away’s

  • Better understanding and overview of Community Engagement activities in community initiatives such as RDA

  • How effective these activities are in influencing community practices 

  • A grasp of good strategies that could potentially be sustained in the future

Short Group Status: 

The FAIRsharing WG is a maintenance mode, but actively works on the adoption of its two outputs: the FAIRsharing registry and the associated recommendations. The adoption is supported by three activities done in collaboration with other RDA groups:  (i) FAIRsharing Community Curation Programme (endorsed by the RDA), (ii) alignment of data policy features, and (iii) identification of common attributes of databases. 

The Professionalising Data Stewardship IG is an ongoing interest group dedicated to increasing collaboration within and outside the RDA community around the promotion of data stewardship as a professional role.

The RDA Engaging Researchers with Data IG is an established IG created to exchange best practices on how to effectively engage with researchers about research data. In particular, they can describe their recent outputs of the Cookbook, and the newest activity of podcasts that they have undertaken.

The RDA Early Career and Engagement IG is an established IG that provides a focal point for Early and Mid-Career Researchers and Professionals, including those involved in various RDA-related fellowships and Early Career programs.

 

Brief introduction describing the activities and scope of the group(s): 

FAIRsharing WG

To promote further adoption and drive improvement of the adopted FAIRsharing registry, the WG contributes to a number of activities with other RDA groups; these activities reflect the requests and needs of the community, and are open and inclusive for all stakeholders. The WG community network encompasses repositories, maintainers and developers, standard-developing organisations, journals and journal publishers, funders, librarians, data stewards, and other scholarly organisations and alliances.

 

Professionalising Data Stewardship IG

The Professionalising Data Stewardship Interest Group focuses on sharing good practices, initiatives, and projects that could help research organisations in professionalising data stewardship. It thus aims to stimulate collaboration within and outside the RDA community. Data stewards have always been a major stakeholder for FAIRsharing; the communities represented by the FAIRsharing WG and PDS IG are overlapping in scope, as both are focused on building a strong community of expert data facilitators. 

Data stewards have been working hard as part of this IG to get their roles recognised within projects as key people for creating and sustaining FAIR outputs. The efforts of both communities on network building and utilising RDA outputs makes this IG a great match for a joint session around the challenges and benefits of communities within and beyond the RDA.

 

RDA Engaging Researchers with Data IG

The RDA Engaging Researchers with Data IG is an established IG created to exchange best practices on how to effectively engage with researchers about research data and develop resources to help various research organisations increase engagement with their research communities. The motivation behind this group is to build social bridges that enable open sharing and re-use of data. As such, it is well placed to provide user stories on how successful community engagement with organisations and outputs has occurred in the past, and on how organisations like the RDA can increase engagement with their outputs.

 

RDA Early Career and Engagement IG

The RDA Early Career and Engagement IG is an established IG that provides a focal point for Early and Mid-Career Researchers and Professionals, including those involved in various RDA-related fellowships and Early Career programs. Specifically, the IG focuses on support with networking amongst themselves to learn about other Early Career scientists and their research, i.e., establishing a “network of peers”, and mentoring from senior RDA members who are interested in mentoring Early Career Researchers and Professionals. As such, it is well placed to provide user stories on how early career researchers have learned about and successfully engaged with the RDA, and how they grow RDA awareness and membership back in their “home” community.

Type of Meeting: 
Informative meeting
Group chair serving as contact person (responsible for the agreement with the corresponding groups): 
Avoid conflict with the following group (1): 
Avoid conflict with the following group (2): 
Meeting presenters: 
Najla Rettberg, Connie Clare, Beth Knazook, Allyson Lister