Beth Plale
Research Data Alliance US Executive Director, Pervasive Technology Institute
Indiana University
This presentation will reintroduce the CNI community to the newly restructured Research Data Alliance US (RDA-US). It will include a review of the objectives of RDA-US, and through discussion, establish points of intersection where RDA-US can best facilitate future needs of the US research library community.
The Research Data Alliance (RDA) has long been a partner with research libraries and has served as a venue for globally informed consensus on best practices for publishing and sharing the products of research. It is a consortium committed to accelerating the sharing of research data across barriers with members from academia, industry, and government who work through focused working and interest groups to create recommendations (standards) that address data infrastructure roadblocks. Its national nodes, which include RDA-US, amplify these groups’ activities to data management communities within their specific regions. The newly re-envisioned RDA-US has already made forward strides, identifying program officers, task force leaders, and steering committee members. RDA-US executive director Beth Plale is one of the dozen international researchers that founded the now 10,000+ member RDA a decade ago. Plale is also a founder of the HathiTrust Research Center.
RDA-US is a recognized advocate of the new forms of research and scholarship that are enabled by RDA recommendations and is facilitating solutions to US-based issues in data sharing to RDA through working groups. The landscape of science and scholarship in the US is evolving rapidly, with a growing emphasis on data sharing, collaboration, and standardized practices. However, challenges persist in achieving widespread adoption of principles and shared practices. RDA-US and the Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI) at Indiana University have joined forces to accelerate standardization efforts, administer US-funded programs, and advance the development of solutions to open science barriers. RDA-US, with the support of PTI, launched the Targeted International working GRoups – US Program, TIGRUS. TIGRUS addresses US data challenges, including those within the national library community. Along with the TIGRUS program, RDA-US is targeting initiatives in workforce development, resource curation, and community building