We live in the data generation. Whether it is addressing rapid climate change, curing diseases, providing food and water for more than seven billion people, or understanding the origins of the universe or the mind — society’s biggest challenges require diverse and sometimes very large data to be shared and integrated across communities, scales, and technologies. The Research Data Alliance (RDA) is building the social and technical bridges that enable open exchange of data on a global level.
Why is this important?
Scientists and researchers around the world are conducting millions of experiments every day and according to statistics more than 80% of the data generated by them sits on their computers never to be shared, exchanged or preserved for future use. Often this is not tied to a lack of willingness to share research data but due to technical challenges in converting, accessing and storing it in the right place and format.
Formed of over 1600 experts from around the world – from academia, industry and government - RDA hopes to mobilise data practitioners and data scientists to improve data sharing, management, interoperability and re-use.
The RDA’s most recent event – the Made with Data workshop, has just taken place in Paris, France. Researchers from industry, academia and the public sector came together to discuss the RDA vision of researchers and innovators openly sharing data across technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the grand challenges of society.
Speakers and delegates from Europe and further afield explored key questions about the funding of research, the challenges of Big Data, the nature of data driven innovation and effective collaboration between sectors.
RDA is of value to industry as it helps create the context for higher-level business services and value-propositions to be created based on RDA recommendations and outputs. Industry should in turn push governments for publicly-funded research data to be subject to RDA agreements on simplifying and harmonising Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), licenses and procedures.
Organisations producing data, developing technologies or offering services can all benefit from engagement with RDA for example in internationalising, ensuring interoperability, being up to date and in-line with international procedures and standards, acquiring knowledge, expertise and having a strong technological argument to convince customers.
You can find out more about the RDA here.