EN100-web

Special theme: Scientific Data Sharing and Re-use
Creating the Culture and technology
for a Global Data Infrastructure
by Mark A. Parsons
The Research Data Alliance implements data sharing infrastructure by building social and
technical bridges across cultures, scales and technologies.
Research data are central to human
understanding and a sustained, healthy
society. Data provide the foundation for
the evidence-based research that has
advanced and transformed society in
recent centuries. Data validate the theories
that create the basis of human
knowledge. Now we have bigger and
more varied data than ever and huge
societal challenges. Some say we have
entered a new paradigm of research
where data exploration is leading us to
new theories and understanding rather
than theories guiding our data collection
[1]. This new paradigm will create new
social and economic opportunities.
Much like the Internet evolved from an
academic network to a global communication
infrastructure that fundamentally
changed commerce and employment,
ready and rapid data access can create
new forms of wealth and transform
society as well as research. This transformation
can only occur if there is the
culture and technology of a supporting
and adaptive global data infrastructure.
The Research Data Alliance (RDA, rdalliance.org)
formed in 2013 to accelerate
this transformation. RDA is a
global, community-based, member
organisation,working to build the social
and technical bridges that enable open
sharing of data.
The bridge is an important metaphor.
Bridges are critical to infrastructure. So
with data infrastructure we seek to
bridge and share data across technologies,
scales, disciplines, and cultures to
address the grand challenges of society.
But building infrastructure is incredibly
complex. It is not just pipes and wires,
but also relationships connecting
machines, people and organisations. If
we consider how past infrastructures
developed, it is clear that infrastructure
evolves somewhat organically. It is
never really designed or architected at
the outset [2].
We have seen time and again how topdown,
“build-it-and-they-will-come”
systems do not realize their potential or
simply fail. RDA strives to be more
bottom-up, allowing anyone to join the
organization if they agree to our basic
principles of openness, balance and har-
monization through a communitydriven,
consensus-based, non-profit
approach. Members can work on whatever
problem is important to them as
long as it advances data sharing. We’re
not trying to solve all the data problems.
We focus on implementing data sharing
solutions. We aim to balance a grassroots
approach with just enough guidance
and process to succeed in implementing
infrastructure.
RDA is also about people and the work
they do. In less than two years, we have
more than 2,500 members from Europe,
the United States, Australia and many
other countries. Members are mostly
academics, but there is increasing representation
from the government and private
sectors (Figure 1). We also have
about two-dozen Organisational
Members including tech companies,
libraries and regional efforts like the
Barcelona Supercomputing Center and
EUDAT. These organisations are key to
ensuring the relevance and adoption of
RDA products.
Figure 1: Distribution of 2,538
individual RDA members in 92
countries as of 3 December 2014.
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ERCIM NEWS 100 January 2015