Research Data Alliance Europe

Research Data Alliance Europe (RDA-Europe) is the European plug-in to the Research Data Alliance (RDA), an international member-based organisation launched in 2013 to focus on the development of infrastructure and community activities to reduce the social/technical barriers to data sharing/re-use and to promote the acceleration of data driven innovation and discovery worldwide.

The ACU has been a key partner in the launch and organisation of RDA-Europe since 2012, working on discreet fixed-length projects with varying focuses. RDA-Europe 1 ran from 2012 to 2014, RDA-Europe 2 ran from 2014-2016, and RDA-Europe 3 is currently ongoing until 2017. Read on for information on each project.

RDA-Europe 1

Status: Completed project

Duration: 2012-2014

Project lead: Tietotekniikan Keskus Oy, Finland (CSC)

Project partners: Max Planck Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung Der Wissenschaften, Germany; Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France; Athena Research and Innovation Center in Information Communication and Knowledge Technologies, Greece; Consorozio Interuniversitario Cineca, Italy; Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche, Italy; Universiteit Maastricht, Netherlands; Science and Technology Facilities Council, United Kingdom; The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom; Trust-IT Services Ltd, United Kingdom; The Association of Commonwealth Universities, United Kingdom; Université de Strasbourg, France

Funder: European Union Seventh Framework Programme

Summary: The RDA-E 1 project established the first global forum driving convergence between emerging global data infrastructures, with a particular focus on EU-US links. Its prime objective was international cooperation with the USA on common e-infrastructure for scientific data and to establish an EU-US coordination platform.

Outputs: A report was produced as part of the project: 'The Data Harvest: How sharing research data can yield knowledge, jobs and growth'.

RDA-Europe 2

Status: Completed project

Duration: 2014-2016

Project lead: Trust-IT, United Kingdom

Project partners: Trust-IT Services Ltd, United Kingdom; Tietotekniikan Keskus Oy, Finland (CSC); Max Planck Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung Der Wissenschaften, Germany; Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche, Italy; Athena Research and Innovation Center in Information Communication and Knowledge Technologies, Greece; Science and Technology Facilities Council, United Kingdom; The Association of Commonwealth Universities, United Kingdom; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France

Funder: European Union Seventh Framework Programme

Project award: EUR 1,052,000

Summary: The RDA-E 2 was the second project in the series, and was structured around two main work packages: fostering innovation through European stakeholder engagement, and RDA governance, communications and outputs.

The ACU’s particular focus within this project was: political engagement – involving policy body workshops, awareness-raising within the European Commission Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT), and broadening the membership of RDA to other regions around the world – and RDA governance.

Outcomes: The ACU supported RDA Global to create an RDA legal entity as a charity.

RDA-Europe 3

Status: Ongoing project

Duration: 2015-2017

Project lead: Max Planck Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung Der Wissenschaften, Germany

Project partners: Tiettotekniikan Keskus Oy, Finland; Trust-IT Services Ltd, United Kingdom; Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche, Italy; Athena Research and Innovation Center in Information Communication and Knowledge Technologies, Greece; Science and Technology Facilities Council, United Kingdom; The Association of Commonwealth Universities, United Kingdom; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France; Royal Irish Academy, Ireland; Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain

Funder: European Commission Horizon 2020

Project award: EUR 3,999,064

Summary: The RDA-E 3 project, the third project in the series, will run until 2017 and will ensure that European political, research, industrial, e-infrastructure, and policy stakeholders are all aware of RDA-Europe's achievements, are engaged with and involved in its activities, and will advance the use of its results. 

The project is structured around four main work packages: European policy-level engagement; global policy-level engagement; practitioner-level engagement; and uptake, communications, and outreach. 

The ACU’s particular focus within this project is global policy engagement, which involves:

• Supporting the European contribution to the activities of the RDA global bodies. One of the major tasks will be to transfer the administration/organisational RDA activities completely to the RDA Foundation based on a well-structured business plan that considers the contributions from all organisation members and simplifies the interface between RDA Global and RDA EU.
• Engaging with and representing RDA Europe at international funder- and policy-level.