Presentation to Japanese agencies and researchers.

1. The Research Data Alliance:
Creating the culture and technology for an international data infrastructure
Mark A. Parsons
Managing Director
RDA/United States
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Tokyo, Japan
14 October 2013
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.

4. We need to start thinking about software in a
way more like how we think about building
bridges, dams, and sewers.
– Dan Bricklin, Software That Lasts 200 Years
http://www.bricklin.com/200yearsoftware.htm

9. Dynamics of Infrastructure
Edwards, et al. 2007 Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics,
Tensions, and Design.
• Infrastructures become “ubiquitous, accessible, reliable, and
transparent” as they mature.
• Staged evolution
• “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.”

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

11. Deliverables that make data work
“Create - Adopt - Use”
• Adopted code, policy, infrastructure, standards, or best 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
not apply to all
• Efforts for which working scientists and
researchers can start today
RDA Principles
Openness
Consensus
Balance
Harmonization
Community Driven
Non-profit

12. RDA Organizational Framework

13. Seeking
full time Secretary
General!
RDA Organizational Framework

14. Other
23%
~900 RDA Members
from 51 Countries
September 2013
Public Admin.
11%
Private
8%
Academia
58%

15. RDA Plenary 2 -- September 16-18, Washington
D.C. -- 3 days of Peace, Love and Data
§ RDA Plenary 2
§ 368 participants from 22
countries and all sectors
§ All-hands stakeholder talks
and RDA working meeting
§ Data Citation Summit
convened by DataCite,
CODATA/ICSTI, Force11,
ESIP, DCC, etc. to create a
common agenda
§ ~5000 tweets over 3 days
Fran Berman
14

16. Groups that Met at the RDA
Plenary
§ Birds-of-a-Feather
§ Linked Data
§ Chemical Safety Data
§ Education and Skills
Development in Data Intensive
Science
§ Libraries and Research Data
§ Cloud Computing and Data
Analysis Training for the
Developing World
§ Working Groups
Data Type Registries
Metadata Standards
Practical Policy
Persistent Identifier Types
Data Foundations and
Terminology
§ Data Categories and Codes
§
§
§
§
§
§ Interest Groups
§ Agricultural Data
§ Big Data Analytics
§ Data Brokering
§ Certification of Trusted
Repositories (joint with ICSUWDS)
§ Long tail of Research Data
§ Marine Data Harmonization
§ Community Capability Model
§ Data Publishing (joint with
WDS)
§ Toxicogenomics
Interoperability
§ Research Data Provenance
§ Data Citation
§ Metadata
§ Economic Models and
Infrastructure for Federated
Materials Data Management
§ Engagement
§ Preservation e-Infrastructure
§ Legal Interoperability (joint with
CODATA)
Fran Berman
BOLD = new
since last
Plenary
§ Global Registry of Trusted
Data Repositories and
Services
§ Digital Practices in History
and Ethnography
§ Data Citation
Harmonization Summit
§ DataCite,FORCE11,
CODATA/ICSTI,
ESIP, DCC, etc.
15

17. RDA Community Building Momentum
§ Growth in number and scope of Interest
Groups and Working Groups
§ New: BOFs for groups as precursor to Interest
Groups
§ Groups beginning to “self-monitor” to promote
concrete deliverables to be used and adopted
§ Increasing interest in more interaction and
“connective tissue” between groups
§ Pressing To-Dos before Plenary 3:
§ Determine the form of RDA deliverables and
outputs and what is needed in terms of an RDA
archive.
§ Develop an RDA policy for IP that comes up in
Interest and Working Groups
Fran Berman
16

18. Organizational Partners
• Organizational Assembly = Organizational Members and Affiliates.
• Organizational Advisory Board will represent Organizational Assembly.
• Current Status:
• 23 Organizations expressed interest in Membership
• 6 Organizations expressed interest in Affiliation
• Next 6 months
• Firm up model for Affiliates (how many, how substantive should the
interaction be? How do they differ from members? Do they?)
• Complete creation of legal entity to receive subscriptions for
Organizational Members
• Elect Organizational Advisory Board at Plenary 3

19. Organizational Partners
Member Applicants
• Microsoft
• Barcelona Supercomputing Center
• European Data Infrastructure (EUDAT)
• Oracle
• Purdue University Libraries
• International Association of STM Publishers
• STFC - Science & Technology Facilities Council
• New Zealand eScience Infrastructure
• Washington University in St. Louis Libraries
• Corporation for National Research Initiatives
(CNRI)
• Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network
Other interested Organizations
• Australian Antarctic Data Centre
• Australian National Data Service
• CERN
• CJSD Consulting
• Columbia University Libraries/Information Services
• CSC - IT Center for Science Ltd.
• Digital Curation Centre
• IBM
• Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard
• Intersect Australia Limited
• Library at American University
• University of Michigan Libraries
Interested Affiliates
• Committee on Data for Science and Technology
(CODATA)
• Connecting Research and Researchers (ORCID)
• DataCite
• International Oceanographic Data and Information
Exchange (IODE)
• Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition (SPARC)
• World Data System (WDS)

20. New RDA Leadership since Plenary 1
§ Council:
§
§
§
§
§
§
§
§ Technical Advisory Board
Patrick Cocquet (France)
Doris Wedlich (Germany)
Kaye Raseroka (Botswana)
Tony Hey (US)
Ross Wilkinson (AU)
John Wood (UK), co-Chair
Fran Berman (US), co-Chair
§ Peter Wittenburg
§ Francoise Genova
Andrew Treloar
Bill Michener
Beth Plale, Chair
6 new TAB members to be elected
this month (14 candidates)
§ 12th TAB member to be appointed by
Council (for balance)
§
§
§
§
• Organizational Assembly
§ Juan Bicarregui, co-Chair
§ Leif Laaksonen, co-Chair
19
Fran Berman

21. RDA Colloquium—RDAC
• The group of government and non-profit science funding organizations 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 organization.
• RDAC members directly or indirectly provide funding to
• support at least 1 full-time equivalent person to work for the RDA Secretariat.
• support Plenary events and the Secretary-General position.
• support individual researchers and data scientists to participate in RDA.

22. 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.

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

24. Next Plenary:
Dublin Ireland
26-28 March 2014
hosted by Australia and Ireland
Plenary 4 will be
in the Netherlands
fall 2014

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