How can we create more effective treatments for Alzheimer’s? Can we increase food security across the globe? Is there a way to more accurately predict natural disasters? Solutions to these and other critical challenges are being advanced through the sharing and exchange of research data, and the efforts of the Research Data Alliance (RDA). In this Q&A, Dr. Francine Berman, chair of the Research Data Alliance/United States, comments on the organization’s past, present and future as a prelude to its 5th Plenary Meeting, taking place next week in San Diego, California.

Briefly tell us about the Research Data Alliance. Why was it created?

Dr. Francine Berman: The Research Data Alliance (RDA) was founded in 2013 as an international organization whose purpose was to facilitate the development, coordination and use of infrastructure that supports data sharing and exchange. This is tremendously important for the research community where the development of technical and social infrastructure such as interoperability frameworks, registries, policy, practice and community standards are needed to utilize and coordinate today’s wealth of data to address complex science and societal challenges.

How do RDA members collaborate?

RDA’s members collaborate through working and interest groups. Interest groups are open-ended and focus on issues around the development and use of data infrastructure. Working group are short-term (12-18 months) and come together to develop and implement specific tools, policy, practices and products that are adopted and used by projects, organizations, and communities. Interest groups often spawn off one or more working groups when individual pieces of infrastructure that need to be developed are identified.

To keep in synch, RDA members meet face to face through Plenaries – three-day meetings held twice a year in various locations worldwide. These are both working meetings, where members meet and advance the efforts of interest and working groups, and community meetings with speakers of interest and updates from funding agencies and policy makers.

With the Research Data Alliance celebrating its second anniversary as an international organization, has the organization’s mission changed or remained the same?

RDA’s mission remains the same and the RDA community is even more interested in making an impact through the development of infrastructure. Last fall, RDA’s first working groups produced the organization’s first set of RDA deliverables; more are set to be delivered this year. Our first deliverables are giving the RDA community an opportunity to assess what is needed for adoption beyond the users embedded in the working groups. We are really looking forward to our first “Adoption Day” for the RDA community hosted by SDSC on March 8.

What type of growth has the RDA experienced since 2013?

RDA had its first “pre-meeting” in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2012. About 100 people showed up. Today, RDA has more than 2,600 individual members from over 90 countries and in all sectors. A number of organizations have become organizational members as well. Many RDA members meet both at the international plenaries and as RDA “regional” communities. Regional groups in Europe (RDA/EU), Australia (RDA/AU) and the U.S. (RDA/US) are all active and new regional groups are also coming on board. As RDA celebrates its second birthday, the organization is working closely with a broad set of countries, communities, and agencies to expand both the RDA community and organizational infrastructure to include new participants and partners in Japan, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and other countries.

What is the U.S. RDA region doing?

In the last year, RDA/US has been focusing on three pilot initiatives: outreach, adoption, and student and early career professional engagement. In the outreach area, RDA/US members have been working with organizations in a variety of domains to bring their issues to existing RDA working and interest groups or to create new ones around their infrastructure needs. In particular, the outreach effort is focusing on helping other groups utilize RDA as a vehicle to develop data sharing infrastructure within the U.S.

In the adoption area, RDA/US has developed the Adoption Day program and assisted specific groups in enhancing their own infrastructure through the adoption of RDA deliverables. In the student and early career professional area, RDA/US has funded students to work with RDA interest and working groups, broadening their own technical knowledge and professional networks during the process.

All of these initiatives have been funded by the National Science Foundation and have been important pilots for the community. The student and early career effort was just funded by the Sloan Foundation as a larger program. Beth Plale, Inna Kouper and Kathy Fontaine are now heading that up that activity. Under the leadership of Larry Lannom, RDA/US has also co-sponsored workshops and developed partnerships with CENDI, the National Data Service, the Sustaining Digital Repositories group, and others. These collaborations are creating important linkages within the U.S. data community that can advance the development of needed infrastructure and help us address U.S. data challenges.

Can you describe some of RDA’s deliverables and users?

Absolutely. RDA’s working groups were conceptualized as “tiger teams” that combine members who can build infrastructure with users who need the infrastructure to share data and get their work done. The purpose of RDA infrastructure deliverables is to enable impact.

One of RDA’s first working groups was the Data Type Registries group. Formed at the first RDA Plenary in early 2013, this group’s objective was to make it easier to create machine-readable and researcher-accessible registries of data types that support the accurate use of data, as unclear typing of data can make data open to misinterpretation and limit its usefulness. For more than a year, this working group collaborated together to develop its model and an implementation. The infrastructure products of this group are being adopted by European Data Infrastructure (EUDAT), the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the U.S., and additional groups who are applying it to their own research activities.

In contrast, RDA’s Wheat Data Interoperability working group is still in process. This group’s objective is to build an integrated wheat information system for the international wheat community of researchers, growers, breeders, etc. Such a system is critical to advance and sustain wheat data information sharing, reusability and interoperability. The working group includes members from the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, and other agriculture-related organizations.

What can we expect at RDA’s Plenary in San Diego?

RDA/US will be hosting the fifth RDA Plenary in San Diego on March 9-11 with Adoption Day on March 8. We’ll welcome a worldwide community of members as well as organizational partners, funders, students, and local colleagues from San Diego. We will have a welcome by Jim Kurose, the new Assistant Director of NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate and 3 keynotes that span the data landscape. Margaret Leinen, Director of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography will speak about ocean data, Stephen Friend, head of Sage Bionetworks will talk about open data commons and patient engagement, and Nao Tsunematsu will talk about data policy in Japan.

The meeting will also be a working meeting with much time spent in open working groups and interest groups. This is a great time for new members to experience the RDA discussions, join a group, talk to RDA members about starting a new group to focus on their own issues of interest, or explore organizational membership. We’ll also have panels with funders and plenary sessions around the digital humanities and other topics. It’s a full schedule but we still left time for a beach party.

What’s next for RDA?

The importance of data sharing to support innovation is increasing and RDA will continue to focus on the development, coordination and use of this infrastructure. RDA has also emerged as a neutral “town square” in which organizations can come together to develop common agendas – each meeting seems to attract other meetings that can benefit from co-location with the RDA community. In Washington at Plenary 2, the data citation community came together. During the San Diego meeting at Plenary 5, the Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group will convene to discuss trends and issues related to digital preservation.

Most important is that RDA continues to provide a vehicle for getting things done and accelerating data sharing. The first two years have created a great culture for doing this. Our hope is that the next years accelerate and improve RDA’s usefulness and impact.

About Francine Berman

Francine Berman is Chair of Research Data Alliance / United States and co-Chair of the RDA Council. She is the Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).