The Research Data Alliance: building bridges for open science

The RDA is an international initiative launched in 2013 from the research community and driven voluntarily by that same research community. 

The RDA's vision and mission is for researchers to openly share and reuse their data across countries, technologies and disciplines. 

The RDA aims to build social and technological bridges between all the actors involved. These include researchers, industrial companies, funding and policy agencies. The ultimate goal? To address major social problems and challenges staring us in the face today by exchanging data in a better and more efficient way. During the coronavirus pandemic, the importance of this was demonstrated once again. 

The Research Data Alliance now has more than 13,000 members from 150 different countries, who join forces in some 100 different working or interest groups. 

Plenary Meetings

 I myself, in addition to my role in the Innovation Unit at Belnet, have been active as a member of the Technical Advisory Board (TAB) in this unique community-driven initiative since September 2023. My job is to work with the other TAB members to: 

• verify that an application for a new working or interest group does not overlap with already existing groups and that it promotes the values for which the RDA stands; 
• act as a liaison between various working and interest groups and, in addition, between these groups and the governing bodies of the RDA itself.

In addition, a large part of our job at the TAB is to provide organisational support for the RDA's semi-annual meetings (Plenary Meetings). It was therefore an honour for me to be able to attend one of these Plenary Meetings last November and to travel to San José (Costa Rica) for that purpose. 

The Plenary Meetings are a hodgepodge of white and grey brain cells coming together from all over the world to come up with creative ideas, start some new working and interest groups, or present the results from existing groups and outline the roadmap for what is to come. 

I was delighted that the community was able to relish making new contacts to establish partnerships. As with all previous plenaries, it was an ideal opportunity for me to explore how Belnet, as a national research network and service provider for the Belgian R&E community, can further establish the principles of 'FAIR data' as part of open science in our network, for example. 

RDA and open science 

Indeed, the Research Data Alliance, the 'FAIR data' principles and open science go hand in hand. For example, many of the active RDA members are working in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) projects or vice versa, and many of the existing RDA working and interest groups include topics relating to FAIR data and open science. 

Whereas the RDA is an international community-driven organisation and can provide input to the open science landscape worldwide, EOSC is the body in Europe for further promoting open science across national borders. 

Within individual country borders, there are then additional national projects or agencies that promote those same values and further support the national research community. 

These include the Federal Open Science Cloud (FedOSC) project, in which Belnet is taking a leading role. This project fits perfectly with Belnet's mission to provide services that meet the specific needs of our network's scientific users. 

Open science and FAIR data are becoming increasingly important and are central to this effort. This makes it important for Belnet to also have a presence at the source of ideas and technologies around this topic, i.e. the RDA community.