The Data Sharing Community: Playing ITS part in Dublin

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The Data Sharing Community: Playing ITS part in Dublin
02 May 2014

The Data Sharing Community: Playing ITS part in Dublin

“We are taking our work beyond Europe's borders, to reach global scale. To make the scientific resources of the world work together, interoperating and open to discovery. For example we are working with partners like the US and Australia in the Research Data Alliance to make scientific progress broader, deeper and more workable”. Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda - Open Access to science and data = cash and economic bonanza, 19 November 2013


‘The Data Sharing Community: Playing YOUR Part’

Over 1600 Research Data Alliance (RDA)  members, experts from all over the world in various different fields, are working together to solve many of the data challenges that exist today. Ireland co-hosted the third plenary meeting  of these experts from 26 to 28 March 2014. 500 RDA members gathered in Croke Park Stadium, Dublin to work intensively on problems ranging from how to address scientific community needs of utilizing big volumes of data, to issues related to data importance for the development of global agriculture, to promoting & sustaining wheat data sharing, reusability and operability to the development of a common global framework for the management of marine data.

Johnny Bambury/Photographer

The RDA organisation enjoys the privilege of performing inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research on data by some of the best professionals from all over the world. Having a trend to work in working groups and interest groups, RDA members are trying to address big issues by fragmenting them.

An example of this is the PID Information Types WG (PIT WG) , which at the 3rd RDA Plenary, focused on in-depth conceptual and technical discussions on the scope and functionality of its main output, an Application Programming Interface (API) for interaction with typed information closely associated with Persistent Identifiers (PIDs). While the Structural Biology interest group was filled with ideas, interest and curiosity. From a “data generator” and user point of view, it would appear that there are several road blocks which need attention beginning from the lower levels of the data life cycle, such as the varied use of techniques within structural biology, availability of wet laboratory protocols, accessing primary unpublished data, data management, and maintaining and developing SB data and meta data. From the discussion at the end of the seminar, it was evident that these issues need to be tackled from the level of the researcher.

The feedback and engagement of the participants of the Data Citation WG  was remarkable. Not only have the existing concepts immediately been challenged by insightful questions, but the amount of pilots that have been proposed was impressive, a total of nine additional use cases from equally many disciplines. The domains that have been suggested ranged from nuclear physics via oceanography towards the humanities and included a highly diverse set of data formats and technology stacks.

The Community Capability Model Interest Group (CCM IG)  highlighted areas of particular attention in the development and employment of the profile tool, in particular: legal, ethical and commercial issues; gaining informed consent for reuse and repurposing; appraisal and quality control; trustworthiness; scale and complexity of data; publication and sharing; citation attribution and accreditation in scholarly communications. All these issues are, of course, topics at the heart of many discussions within RDA as a whole. Consequently, by including all these areas in their work, the CCM IG members are concerned with a whole range of pressing issues that are of interest for RDA members. And indeed, it is the core purpose of the IG to do this work for the benefit of the whole Alliance.

As a first-timer to RDA, you may not be sure exactly what to expect. A lot of people interested in the field of research data? Sure. Many presentations on current trends and challenges? Of course. But what was striking about Dublin were the constant, on-going intense discussions which took place literally everywhere. People gathering in small groups in the corridors, outside the conference venue, even in the rest rooms, not just to catch up but to actually talk about issues related to research data.

Rather than being a niche gathering, it was a place for people who “care about how the sharing of research data can progress to discoveries that have the potential to be of benefit to all,” said Dr Ruth Adler, the Australian ambassador to Ireland. Research data is costly enough and difficult enough to generate in the first place; having it sitting forgotten on a hard drive somewhere, never to be shared, is not only careless but also not in the spirit of scientific endeavour.

Croke Park, 3rd Plenary meeting venue, is a historical land mark in Ireland and represents the strength and resilience of the Irish people during times of turbulence. In unison with this, research is continuously evolving and changing with data being generated exponentially so implementation of the policies and solutions proposed by the RDA to accommodate this will be challenging. As challenging as this may be, the eagerness and attentiveness of the people present at the meeting was undeniable suggesting that the RDA will succeed in overcoming these issues undoubtedly.
The next RDA Plenary meeting takes place in Amsterdam 22-24 September 2014, you can’t afford to miss it.

Join this global endeavour, register to the on-line community and become a Member of RDA it’s open to all and free of charge https://www.rd-alliance.org/user/register

This article was compiled from RDA member blogs, in particular the winners of the Early Career Researcher & Scientists working with data grants to attend the meeting.