Meeting Minutes

by Danah Tonne and Ajinkya Prabhune

 

Objectives & Agenda

The foci of the June meeting will be as follows:

• interaction between the Data Fabric and Data Publishing coordination groups and their related WGs and IGs

• facilitate adoption questions from amongst IG attendees

• build connections between the technically oriented data provisioning and data consumer groups, and social/policy oriented data provisioning and data consumer groups

 

“Sharing RDA visions”

• What needs to be done next?

• How does RDA shape the research data world in the future?

The first part of the meeting was shaped by talks from the various Working and Interest Groups Chairs who were asked to present their work according to the objectives of the meeting. The second part of the meeting there was an open discussion between the WGs and IGs and the RDA TAB members.

 

General Topics

 

1. Coordination & Facilitation (Publishing Groups, IG Data Fabric, Metadata Groups)

As there are many intergroup dependencies in RDA, there are few groups who have already started the coordination and facilitation between the concerned groups. These efforts are helping the groups to achieve their goals but are not completely transparent to RDA. As RDA is expanding it is clear that there is a growing need for systematic coordination and facilitation between the groups and to provide a mechanism for dissolving groups to recover the resources.

 

2. Test beds (prototypes → production)

Currently RDA does not provide any testbeds for the various groups, therefore outputs (proof-of-concept etc.) are implemented at different home institutions. Different possibilities to transform an RDA output into production state were stated. It remains to be discussed if RDA needs to provide resources.

 

3. No cross-community approach for building and managing use cases

Different expectations are connected to use cases (projects, contacts etc.). Deriving success stories from the submitted use cases will be beneficial for the WGs, IGs and eventually the adopters.

 

4. Role of domain-specific groups (DSG) in RDA: How to connect domain-specific and technical groups effectively?

DSGs can take advantage of the cross-disciplinary outputs of RDA. It is the responsibility of the domain related group to spread out and to gather information. RDA acts as a networking platform and communication efforts between groups can be supported by the TAB liaison.

 

TAB/COUNCIL questions to WG/IG chairs

There was a discussion about the different kinds of outputs the groups were producing, council would like to get information about the time constraints, outputs and adopters, What could be the most effective mechanism of acquiring this information?

• Co-chairs must have this information and should be asked (email)

• Objectives have to be completed before the next plenary

• Keep the respective WG/IG page on RDA updated (no plenary report)

• A short report for the Council will be written.

 

RDA WG collaboration meeting: How to proceed?

The collaboration meetings are beneficial and they should continue. The structure of the talks could be less formalized. Financing is an issue, the regional RDA can maybe offer financial support if needed. Synchronization between continents should be kept in mind as the attendees vary depending on the location of the meeting. All WGs and IGs chairs should be invited (low attendance at this meeting).

• Topic for the next meeting: “Connecting infrastructure and discipline-specific groups”

• Possible objective: information sharing

 

Special Topics from the Group Talks

 

WG Data Citation – Andreas Rauber

Topic – Approaches to making data citable

Description – Timestamped query for retrieving the cited data

Potential collaboration – Terminology IG, Data Fabric IG (planned), Metadata Groups, Reproducibility IG, Publishing IG, Preservation e-Infrastructure IG

Adopters – Domain-specific groups needed

Highlights:

• Data pilots available for SQL, CSV, XML (partially)

• 2 page flyer “Data Citation of Evolving Data”

 

WG Data Type Registries – Larry Lannom

Topic – Registry framework for registration data types

Description – Data sharing requires that data can be parsed understood and reused by others than the creators.

Highlights:

• several prototype implementations, more planned

• Data Typing WG in planning stage (BOF Paris)

 

WG PID Information Types — Tobias Weigel

Potential collaborators – DTR, PID Collections, Data Fabric

Highlights:

• initial version of API specification available (will be refined after feedback)

• practical adoption should be pushed by the users, input from community is vital

• minimal subset of information can be agreed on, accept it is not complete

• PID Collections WG – no cross-community approach for building and managing objects → use cases needed

 

WG Metadata Standards Directory — Rebecca Koskela

Potential collaborators –  Data Fabric and Data Publication, many groups

Highlights:

• MSDWG finished

• MSCWG will be initiated from P6

• Many use cases submitted, metadata everywhere

• Joint meetings in Plenaries are difficult to handle – difficult to work with a large group

 

IG Data Fabric – Raphael Ritz

Topic: To understand and extract components/service which are common to diverse scientific use cases.

Potential collaborators – many WGs and IGs, data publishing

Highlights:  

• White Paper  V 1.0, use case template, use cases 10-12 been collected

 

RDA/WDS Publishing Groups – Sarah Callaghan

Topics – Giving researchers the due credit for managing and publishing their data.

Potential collaborators – Data Fabric (workflow), Domain Repository IG (planned)

Highlights:

• Metadata model (schema), next step: complete the prototype

• Simplified generic repository workflow, template available

• Survey completed for 115 participants

• topic: bibliometrics for data, standards required, monitor adoption

• 18 months are very short to achieve the goals

 

IG Marine Data Harmonization – Helen Glaves

Topic – Promoting a common global framework for marine data management

Potential Collaborators: MSD, DFT, Data Citation (meeting at P6)

Highlights :

• Adopting results from DTR, Data Citation, DFT and (insert here from slides)

• Dealing with heterogeneous data (formats, policies, standards)

Questions:

• how do we bring the technical and domain groups together (to make an action plan)?

• storage of large-scale files (recordings of meetings)?

 

IG ELIXIR Bridging Force → Rob Hooft

Topic – European infrastructure for life science data (Hub-Spoke model)

Highlights:

• 5 main ELIXIR platforms (Tools, Data, Computing Infrastructure, Learning, Interoperability)

• gain experience from specific domains and make it transparent for a generic solution

Question:

• two information groups per IG/WG: people informed and the rest? – contra openness of RDA

 

IG Data Foundation and Terminology – Gary Berg-Cross, Raphael Ritz

Potential Collaborations – Several RDA groups

Highlights:

• Tool for establishing initial definition for different terms, output in RDF format

• Preparing the tool for a broader audience in and out of RDA

 

WG RDA/CODATA Summer Schools in Data Science and Cloud Computing in the Developing World – Hugh Shanahan

Topic – Setup sustainable summer schools in data science for supporting researchers of the developing world.

Highlights:

• disctinction into vanilla schools (basic courses, first one in Italy) and flavoured schools (advanced courses, work in progress)