The research data alliance – A global collaboration forum to tackle data challenges

The Research Data Alliance (RDA) [1], a community-driven initiative with the goal of building the social and technical infrastructure to enable open sharing and re-use of data, currently has over 11,000 members - including data scientists, librarians, researchers, funders, policy makers - from more than 140 countries [2]. RDA members come together through focused Working Groups and Interest Groups, formed by international experts from academia, the private sector and government, to collaborate on tackling global data challenges. To date, RDA Working and Interest Groups have produced about 50 Outputs, which have been adopted in over 100 settings [2].

RDA holds biannual Plenaries, highly interactive work meetings where members meet and network, advance the work of their groups, and propose or establish new groups. Due mainly (but not exclusively) to the COVID-19 pandemic, RDA Plenaries have moved from mainly physical meetings with some remote access to mainly virtual meetings with no, or very small, face-to-face components. This provides an opportunity, in particular for people for whom travel to Plenaries is difficult, to engage with RDA and participate in the RDA Plenaries, and in RDA more generally.

In this poster, we will present an overview of the outcomes, activities, and opportunities for engaging with and benefitting from RDA, including RDA outputs, adoption stories, and current data challenges being tackled by RDA groups. We will also outline different pathways to engaging with RDA, and will also look forward to the RDA Plenary 17, to be held from 20-22 April 2021, and a series of regional events associated with the Plenary, which should be beneficial to the New Zealand eResearch community.

Dr Stefanie Kethers is the Director of Operations of the Research Data Alliance and has been a member of the RDA Secretariat since before the RDA’s launch in 2013. She has a strong interest in supporting cooperation and collaboration in the workplace, and has previously worked as a researcher on a variety of related projects, including investigating archival services for Koorie communities, researchers’ data management practices and needs, and improving handover processes in hospitals

Dr Andrew Treloar is the Director Platforms and Software for the Australian Research Data Commons. He was co-chair of the Research Data Alliance (http://rd-alliance.org/) Technical Advisory Board from 2013-2020. His twitter bio describes him as "Data-tragic, urban-greenie, homegardener, cycling-commuter, BodyPump-addict, lapsed-linguist", which probably isn't a bad summary. He never seems to be able to make enough time for practising his ‘cello or reading, but does try to prioritise talking to his chickens and working in his vegetable garden and orchard. Further details at http://andrew.treloar.net/ or follow him on Twitter as @atreloar.