A review of the purpose, status, and activity of RDA and how these all relate to the international library community.

1. The Research Data Alliance
Creating the culture and technology for an international data infrastructure
Mark A. Parsons
Secretary General
!
!
International Federation of Library Associations
Lyon, France
20 August 2014
Unless otherwise noted, the slides in this presentation are licensed by Mark A. Parsons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

2. All of society’s grand challenges require diverse
(often large) data to to be shared and integrated
across cultures, scales, and technologies.

3. Research Data Alliance
Vision
Researchers and innovators openly share data across
technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the
grand challenges of society.
!
Mission
RDA builds the social and technical bridges that enable
open sharing of data.
!

8. Dynamics of Infrastructure
Edwards, et al. 2007 Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics,
Tensions, and Design.
• Infrastructures become “ubiquitous, accessible, reliable, and
transparent” as they mature.
• Systems Networks Inter-networks
• “system-building, characterized by the deliberate and successful
design of technology-based services.”
• “technology transfer across domains and locations results in
variations on the original design, as well as the emergence of
competing systems.”
• Finally, “a process of consolidation characterized by gateways
that allow dissimilar systems to be linked into networks.”

9. Not what, but
When is infrastructure?

10. Not what, but
When and
Who is infrastructure?

11. Bridges and
Gateways
Gateways are often wrongly
understood as “technologies,”
i.e. hardware or software
alone. A more accurate
approach conceives them as
combining a technical solution
with a social choice, i.e. a
standard, both of which must
be integrated into existing
users’ communities of
practice. Because of this,
gateways rarely perform
perfectly.
— Edwards et al. 2007

12. Ecology of Infrastructure Figure derived from F. Millerand
based on S. L. Star & K. Ruhleder
(1996)

13. "Data Deluge," Brett Ryder, The Economist, Feb. 2010

14. Data Blizzard?
© Mindy Veissid | Mindy Veissid Photography.

15. Diverse snow crystal photos by Kenneth G. Libbrecht
snowcrystals.com

16. Distribution of NSF Awards by Dollar Value
!
© 2009 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois
The long tail of science Heidorn 2008

17. What libraries can do
• Help researchers describe their data
• Help them pick formats to store it in
• Provide guidance and services around choosing repositories and
providing access
• Provide guidance on privacy, licensing, and sharing issues
• Ensure preservation of appropriate data for future research reuse
Slide courtesy Dean Krafft, Cornell University Library

18. What more libraries can do
• Collaborate at scale across institutions and disciplines
• Help link the data with its research context to make it more discoverable
and reusable
• Help link it to publications about the research
• Provide collaborative tools and spaces for researchers to work with the
data
• Provide the people and organisational support to help researchers to
manage research data
Slide courtesy Dean Krafft, Cornell University Library

19. What can’t libraries do
• Handle the Data Deluge – “really big data”
• Fund this ourselves – we need a business model to support the costs
• Do work that doesn’t clearly benefit our own researchers and
institutions
• Provide cyberinfrastructure to support analysis, simulation, and
visualization
Slide courtesy Dean Krafft, Cornell University Library

20. Libraries must contribute to
the local, regional, and global
data/information/knowledge
infrastructure!

21. Deliverables that make data work
“Create - Adopt - Use”
• Adopted code, policy, specifications, standards, or practices that
enable data sharing
• “Harvestable” efforts for which 12-18 months of work can eliminate
a roadblock
• Efforts that have substantive applicability to
groups within the data community but may
RDA Principles
not apply to all
Openness
Consensus
• Efforts that can start today
Balance
Harmonization
Community Driven
Non-profit

22. RDA Organisational Framework

23. Other
Private6%
12%
Government
17% Academia
65%
Distribution of 2,164 Individual RDA Members in 86 Countries
20 August 2014
Map courtesy traveltip.org
Europe
49%
North America
38%
Austral-pacific
5%
Africa
2%
South
America
1%
Asia
5%

24. RDA Organisational Framework

25. New RDA Leadership since Plenary 1
Fran Berman
25
§ Council:
§ Fran Berman (US), co-Chair
§ Patrick Cocquet (France)
§ Tony Hey (US)
§ Kaye Raseroka (Botswana)
§ Doris Wedlich (Germany)
§ Ross Wilkinson (Australia)
§ John Wood (UK), co-Chair
• Secretariat
§ Hilary Hanahoe
§ Fotis Karayannis
§ Kathy Fontaine
§ Mark Parsons, Sec Gen
§ Herman Stehouwer
!
• Organisational Assembly
§ Juan Bicarregui, co-Chair
§ Walter Stewart, co-Chair
!
§ Technical Advisory Board
§ Bridget Almas
§ Simon Cox
§ Peter Fox
§ Francoise Genova
§ Bill Michener
§ Beth Plale, Chair
§ Susanna-Assunta Sansone,
§ Jamie Shiers
§ Rainer Stotzka
§ Andrew Treloar, Chair
§ Peter Wittenburg

26. New RDA Leadership since Plenary 1
Fran Berman
25
§ Council:
§ Fran Berman (US), co-Chair
§ Patrick Cocquet (France)
§ Tony Hey (US)
§ Kaye Raseroka (Botswana)
§ Doris Wedlich (Germany)
§ Ross Wilkinson (Australia)
§ John Wood (UK), co-Chair
• Secretariat
§ Hilary Hanahoe
§ Fotis Karayannis
§ Kathy Fontaine
§ Mark Parsons, Sec Gen
§ Herman Stehouwer
!
• Organisational Assembly
§ Juan Bicarregui, co-Chair
§ Walter Stewart, co-Chair
!
§ Technical Advisory Board
§ Bridget Almas
§ Simon Cox
§ Peter Fox
§ Francoise Genova
TAB
§ Bill Michener
Beth Plale, Nominations
§ Chair
§ Susanna-open Assunta until Sansone,
31
§ Jamie Shiers
August
§ Rainer Stotzka
§ Andrew Treloar, Chair
§ Peter Wittenburg

27. Organisational
Partners—key linkages
• Organisations play an essential
role as adopters!
• Organisational Assembly =
Organisational Members and
Affiliates.
• Organisational Advisory Board will
represent Organisational
Assembly to Council
• Organisational Members pay
(modest) dues and have a special
voice within RDA helping ensure
RDA products stay relevant
Image courtesy anybots.com

28. Organisations Ready to Join
§ Organisational Members:
§ Alliance for Permanent Access
§ American University Library
§ Australian National Data Service
§ Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro
Nacional de Supercomputación
§ Columbia University Library
§ CNRI
§ CSC
§ Digital Curation Center
§ EIROForum IT Working Group
§ eResearch Services and Scholarly
Application Development Division of
Information Services, Griffith University
§ European Data Infrastructure (EUDAT)
§ National Institute of Advanced Industrial
Science and Technology (AIST), Japan
§ International Association of STM Publishers
§ Internet2
§ Microsoft Research
§ NZ eScience Infrastructure
§ Purdue University Libraries
§ Research Data Canada
§ Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition (SPARC)
§ Washington University in St. Louis Libraries
§ Science and Technology Facilities Council
!
§ Affiliates
§ CODATA
§ ICSU World Data System
§ ORCID
§ DataCite
§ CASRAI
§ Global Alliance for Genomics and Health

29. RDA Organisational Framework

30. RDA Colloquium—RDAC
• The group of government and non-profit science funding
organisations that support the data and science communities to
participate in RDA activities:
• US Government (NSF and NIST)
• European Commission
• Australian Government
• Allows agencies the opportunity to share funding program plans
that support data exchange, interoperability, and data
infrastructures across the globe, and thereby amplify their impact.
• Related to but distinct from RDA. A parallel organisation.

31. RDA Organisational Framework

32. RDA Working Groups
• Brokering Governance*
• Data Citation WG
• Data Description Registry
Interoperability
• Data Foundation and Terminology WG
• Data Type Registries WG
• Metadata Standards Directory
Working Group
• PID Information Types WG
• Practical Policy WG
• RDA/CODATA Summer Schools in
Data Science and Cloud Computing
in the Developing World*
• RDA/WDS Publishing Data
Bibliometrics WG
• RDA/WDS Publishing Data Services
WG
• RDA/WDS Publishing Data Workflows
WG
• Repository Audit and Certification
DSA–WDS Partnership WG
• Standardisation of Data Categories
and Codes WG
• The BioSharing Registry: connecting
data policies, standards & databases
in life sciences*
• Urban Quality of Life Indicators
• Wheat Data Interoperability WG
* in review

33. RDA Interest Groups
• Agricultural Data Interoperability IG
• Big Data Analytics IG
• Biodiversity Data Integration IG
• Brokering IG
• Community Capability Model IG
• Data Fabric IG*
• Data for Development
• Data in Context IG
• Development of cloud computing capacity and
education in developing world research
• Digital Practices in History and Ethnography IG
• Domain Repositories Interest Group
• Education and Training on handling of research
data
• ELIXIR Bridging Force IG*
• Engagement IG
• Ethics and Social Aspects of Data*
• Federated Identity Management
• Geospatial IG*
• Long tail of research data IG
• Marine Data Harmonization IG
• Metabolomics
• Metadata IG
• PID Interest Group
• Preservation e-Infrastructure IG
• RDA/CODATA Legal Interoperability IG
• RDA/CODATA Materials Data, Infrastructure &
Interoperability IG
• RDA/WDS Certification of Digital Repositories IG
• RDA/WDS Publishing Data Cost Recovery for
Data Centres
• RDA/WDS Publishing Data IG
• Research data needs of the Photon and Neutron
Science community
• Research Data Provenance
• Service Management IG
• Structural Biology IG
• Toxicogenomics Interoperability IG
* in review

34. Get involved!
• Join RDA as an individual member supporting our principles at
http://rd-alliance.org
• Join as an Organisational Member (nominal fee) or an
Organisational Affiliate (jointly sponsored efforts).
• Initiate or join an Interest Group
• Propose or join a Working Group
• Attend the RDA Plenaries
Coming together is a beginning;
keeping together is progress;
working together is success.
—Henry Ford

35. Plenary 4 Amsterdam
©2013 Pecoff Studios Inc
22-24 September 2014

36. Info:
enquiries@rd-alliance.org
@resdatall

37. Regional RDAs
• RDA/United States, Australian National Data Service, RDA/Europe,
• Implement RDA deliverables locally and enhance adoption.
• Ensure regional or national issues are addressed globally.
• Support plenaries and support attendance at plenaries.

38. Working
Group Deliverables Adopters/Users
Data
Founda*ons
and
Terminology Data
Organisa*onal
Model,
OIF,
EUDAT,
DASISH
Defined
terminology
in
a
registry
Data
Type
Registries Federa*on
between
data
type
registries CNRI,
EUDAT,
IDF
Persistent
Iden*fier
Informa*on
Types Core
informa*onal
types,
DKRZ
Prototype
protocol
and
API
Prac*cal
Policy Example
policy
sets EUDAT,
Chapel
Hill,
DKRZ,
(all
par*cipants)
Standardiza*on
of
Data
Categories
and
Codes BeOer
language
codes TLA,
Paradisec,
ISO
Metadata
Standards
Directory Metadata
Directory Dublin
Core,
Dataone,
MRC,
Jisc,
NEON,
NIST,
CLARIN,
DDI,
DPN,
OGF
Data
Cita*on:
making
data
citable Cita*on
of
dynamic
data
streams EUDAT,
etc.
DSA-­‐WDS
Cer*fica*on Merger
of
DSA
and
WDS
cer*fica*on DSA,
WDS
Wheat
Data
Interoperability
Group Wheat
Linked
data
framework INRA,
FAO,
CIMMYT
Data
Descrip*on
Registry
Interoperability
between
registries.
Interoperability
(bilateral
prototypes)
ANDS,
DATA-­‐PASS,
Dryad,
Thomson
Reuters
DCI,
VIVO,
CERN,
DANS,
DA|
RDA Working Group Outputs