December Newsletter 2020: Season's Greetings, CoPs, Plenary 17 Deadline Extension and more
Note: The RDA Secretariat is closed for the holiday season, beginning 19 December. All activities will recommence on 4 January.
From The RDA Council Members To The RDA Community, With Heartfelt Thanks For Your Dedication And Work In 2020 And Warmest Wishes For 2021
The RDA Council Members (Jill Benn, Sandra Collins, Ingrid Dillo, Joyce Gosata Maphanyane, Jason Haga, Bob Hanisch, Edit Herczog, Mark Leggott and Claudia Maria Bauzer Medeiros) send their personal holiday greetings to the RDA community in this announcement.
RDA Announces New Group Category: Communities of Practice
In an effort to build discipline or domain specific communities, the RDA is pleased to announce a new category of groups within its organisation, Communities of Practice (CoP). Complementing the existing RDA Working and Interest group categories, comprising members who are often representative of various areas, CoPs will provide the opportunity to investigate, discuss, coordinate and provide knowledge and skills within a specific discipline and/or research domain.
With a focus on specific discipline/research domains, each CoP will provide a further mechanism for members to become engaged and involved in the community, while attracting new members and enhancing communications with those outside the RDA. By offering a forum to discuss data-related trends and challenges, CoP members will learn from individuals’ experiences and collaborate on implementing solutions. As the RDA has produced numerous Outputs relevant to many disciplines or domains, members within a CoP will bring insight on how best to apply them within the context of that area. Learn more.
RDA's 17th Plenary Meeting News and Updates
Call for Sessions - extended until 26 January 2021
The deadline for the Call for Sessions for RDA P17 has been extended to January 26th 2021, 23:59 UTC, to allow for more preparation time and to accommodate the holiday break. To submit your request for a breakout session, please complete the relevant form on this page.
Plenary 17 will include all of the main elements of our typical in-person plenary event (breakout sessions, plenary sessions, poster event, networking events, etc.):
- Working and Interest Group Sessions
- Joint Meetings (including multiple working and interest groups)
- Birds of a Feather Sessions
For P17, breakouts will be scheduled on each day of the meeting at set times. In your submission request, please select which time(s) you and your group will be available to present. Both live and recorded presentations are options, although for recorded presentations, we recommend a representative from your group be available for a live question and answer session.
There are additional breakout slots available on Friday 23 April 2021 (breakouts 9, 10 and 11), aiming to accommodate international time zones, where BST is a critical issue. We will do our best to accommodate these time zones.
The Call for Posters for RDA's 17th Plenary Meeting is now open! To participate in the VP17 poster session, please submit an abstract no later than 26 March 2021. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out the following week. Instructions will also be provided on how to access the platform and upload the poster and related documents. To submit your poster, please complete this form.
The call for Co-located Events is still open! At previous RDA plenaries, numerous organizations have opted to hold their own meetings at or near our meeting venue, leveraging the size and enthusiasm of the international data community present at each of those locations. At P17, we are anticipating another event that will be highly attended either virtually or in person when possible by its highly motivated community. If your event will be showcasing your data-related work and/or synergizing with other data experts, co-locating with P17 will provide you an excellent opportunity to meet these objectives. To co-locate with RDA for P17, simply submit your application before 12 February 2021. We will review all submissions and send out notifications of acceptance by 26 February 2021.
We are delighted to announce our keynote speakers for RDA P17, Professor Richard Gold (Centre for Intellectual Property Policy) and Dr Jeni Tennison (the Open Data Institute).
A James McGill Professor, Richard Gold was the founding Director and current director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy. He teaches in the area of intellectual property, international intellectual property, comparative intellectual property, innovation policy and intellectual property management. His research generally focuses on the life sciences. Professor Gold has provided advice to Health Canada, Industry Canada, the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (where he was the lead author of the OECD Guidelines on the Licensing of Genetic Inventions and a report on Collaborative Mechanisms in Life Science Intellectual Property), the World Health Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization and UNITAID.
Jeni Tennison is Vice President and Chief Strategy Adviser at the Open Data Institute. She earned a PhD in AI from the University of Nottingham, then worked as an independent consultant, specialising in open data publishing and consumption, before joining the ODI as Technical Director in 2012, becoming CEO in 2016, and Vice President in 2020. She served on the W3C’s Technical Architecture Group from 2011 to 2015 and co-chaired the W3C’s CSV on the Web Working Group. She also sits on the Advisory Board for the Open Contracting Partnership; the Board of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data; the UK’s Health Tech Advisory Board; and advises the Board of OpenUK.
There are multiple sponsorship opportunities available, tailored to accommodate various budgets and needs.
RDA and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Association
In July 2020, the legal entity for the European Open Science Cloud – the EOSC Association – was set up as an AISBL in Belgium. The Research Data Alliance (RDA) is delighted to support this important initiative. Given the many similarities in the two organisations, including the not-for-profit, community-based and foundational values of openness and transparency, over the past year, RDA has been happy to dedicate effort to consult on the statutes of the Association and form part of the task force to assist in writing the Bylaws. Hilary Hanahoe, RDA Secretary General and Ingrid Dillo, RDA Council Co-chair, were involved in the definition of the Financial articles of the Bylaws.
This week sees a big milestone in the EOSC Association journey, with the first General Assembly (GA) taking place on Thursday 17 December. In addition to the presentation of the EOSC Partnership Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), the GA will be electing the President and eight Directors of the EOSC Association Board. Of the fourteen candidates standing for election, RDA is pleased to note that exactly eight of them are RDA members. Read more.
Launching RDA4EOSC: A New Initiative from RDA Supporting the European Open Science Cloud
In November 2020, the Research Data Alliance, the Digital Repository of Ireland and the Digital Curation Centre joined forces on a new project aiming to support the internationalisation and implementation of EOSC. This project is being funded through an open call by the EOSC Secretariat (https://www.eoscsecretariat.eu/funding-opportunities).
The work will be organised around six pillars of activity. Specifically, the RDA will support a subset of scientific and research communities to prepare for engagement with EOSC, and will drive the identification of a set of technological and domain specific solutions to be tested in the EOSC environment while at the same type supporting the approval of a set of ICT technical specifications for application within the EOSC. Coupled with this, the RDA will provide support to the internationalisation and technical alignment of EOSC through dedicated activities at the RDA plenary meeting in April 2020, as well as providing support for European members of the RDA governance bodies to interact and engage with their international counterparts to ensure awareness and understanding of EOSC. Read the full announcement.
RDA Announces New Affiliate Member – The International COVID-19 Data Alliance
RDA welcomes International COVID-19 Data Alliance (ICODA) to RDA as its newest affiliate member. ICODA, convened by Health Data Research UK, focuses on building trustworthy international partnerships and enduring data infrastructure to support rapid responses to the current COVID-19 and future pandemics and other health challenges. Launched in mid-2020, ICODA is an open and inclusive organisation, with a set of principles that centre around equity, transparency and responsible data sharing.
As an Affiliate member, ICODA will support the use and dissemination of the RDA COVID-19 Working Group’s Recommendations and Guidelines on data sharing to ICODA partners and members. In turn, RDA will support and disseminate information on ICODA activities, particularly a new Grand Challenges ICODA COVID-19 Data Science initiative, an open funding that was announced on 17 December. Read more.
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