Open Research Data on the Horizon … and beyond

RDA Europe Workshop prior to the RDA Plenary in Washington, 10 September 2013, RZG Munich - Garching

The present European and global research data landscape is highly fragmented, by disciplines or by domains (oceanography, life sciences, health, agriculture, space, climate, etc.). A variety of institutions, some national, some international, strive to deal with some aspects of data, but no effort exists where some degree of coherence is achieved or even sought. (From Research Data e-Infrastructures: Framework for Action in H2020 European Commission, Directorate General CNECT, Directorate C: Excellence in Science, Unit C1 - e-Infrastructures) 

The Research Data Alliance (http://rd-alliance.org) aims to facilitate the global research data sharing and exchange. This international effort encourages increasing interest among people who wish to participate to global research data initiatives. There is a parallelism of community based harmonization approaches, including worldwide active communities, stimulated by answering the big scientific and societal challenges and driven by the need to address cross-disciplinary challenges. The iCORDI (www.icordi.eu) project is the European plugin into global RDA activities and is the organiser of this workshop.

The goal of this workshop is to discuss European aspects of global research data sharing and exchange as well as inject new ideas and European achievements to be presented and represented during the RDA 2nd Plenary meeting taking place at the National Academy of Sciences 16 – 18 September 2013 in Washington DC. 

The meeting is also an opportunity for those who are unable to attend the Plenary meeting to understand RDA and provide inputs. The workshop will look at the European Commission’s Research Data e-Infrastructures: Framework for Action in H2020 to understand the focus & direction pan-European and global activities should take.

With respect to the cross-disciplinary activities it is obvious that the notions of "components or building blocks" of common data infrastructures and building specific "data bridges" are becoming accepted metaphors for approaching the data complexity and enable data sharing. The Research Data Alliance aims to tackle this large problem in a bottom-up fashion with short-term concrete-goal working groups.

Many RDA working groups (http://rd-alliance.org/working-groups/general-introduction/) have already started; Interested individuals as well as new working groups can join the process at any point in time.

Join us in Garching/Munich to actively participate and share your ideas and thoughts.

For more information and registration, please visit the event website: https://rd-alliance.org/open-research-data-horizon-%E2%80%A6-and-beyond.html-1