[Sarah Jones]

Remote Access Instructions
 
Meeting Location: Commonwealth A1
 
Collaborative Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OZkA8r7UTGE2R0ZXJBkRzjFFgS986Db-POoelYP9wJU/edit

Meeting objectives
This session builds on previous events which discussed the initiatives underway to develop Open Science clouds / platforms / commons in Africa, Australia, Europe, USA and elsewhere. These also include open government portals and initiatives outside traditional research contexts. The agenda focuses on coordinating work to ensure the solutions under development align and interoperate in order to achieve a genuinely Global Open Science Commons. 
An initial activity for this session and future events will be to undertake a comparative typology, analysis and mapping of the different Open Science platforms. A framework will be put forward to structure this. Discussion will also cover priorities and potential scope for a WG and potential IG to progress work in this area.
 
Meeting agenda
The session will focus on discussion and group work rather than presentations. Representatives from the different international initiatives will be invited to submit updated presentations or documentation in advance of the BoF which will be shared as pre-reading.
The BoF chair, Australian colleagues and others will devise a framework to map the scope of each OS platform to guide the activity during the session. The IDCC conference in Melbourne is proposed as a venue for a planning meeting to prepare inputs to this RDA BoF. A preliminary mapping of at least 3-5 international Open Science platforms is expected as an outcome and will be enhanced further via subsequent events, coordinated via the proposed WG.
– 10 mins to introduce past work and outline potential objectives / activities for a WG
– 40 mins for an initial activity to support the proposal. We will provide a framework and set of questions to do a comparative mapping of the scope of each OS platform, standards in use, and business models etc. This will help to identify areas where we can/should/must work together. The framework and some worked examples will be shared in advance.
– 30 mins discussion to feedback on proposals and agree scope & list of topics for case statement for a WG. 
– 10 mins planning, including highlighting forthcoming sessions and how to engage
 
Short description
A number of sessions have been run at previous events which this proposal builds on. At the 11th RDA plenary in Berlin in March 2018 there was a BoF entitled Towards a Global Open Science Commons. This included presentations on the African Open Science Platform, the Australian Research Data Cloud, the European Open Science Cloud, the NIH data commons and Canadian activities. At International Data Week in Gaborone in November 2018, a SciDataCon session was held on Delivering a Global Open Science Commons. Again a number of presentations were given to profile existing work, after which the group discussion pointed to a number of next steps. It was suggested that the community hosts an international meeting to converge on a framework for analysing open science platforms and undertake in-depth workshop activities to examine how people are building these in each continent. The objective is to provide a structured way to understand the various initiatives, to identify good practices and – above all – to provide a framework that will facilitate alignment, efficiency and interoperability were possible and desirable.

In parallel to these discussions, the European Commission convened a number of Expert Groups to define what is required to implement a European Open Science Cloud and ensure this supports FAIR data. The newly convened EOSC Executive Board will implement the recommendations coming out of the Expert Group reports and initiate a number of working groups to coordinate activities in the funded infrastructure projects. One of the five priority deliverables for the EOSC EB is to address the international perspective and ensure EOSC activities align and coordinate with others.
We propose addressing the objective of converging on a model for Open Science platforms and coordinating global activities by developing an RDA Working Group to undertake the comparative landscape analysis and provide a forum for consensus building and standards development. The analysis will include formulating a typology of key features of Open Science platforms and identifying key areas 1) where alignment will be important for global benefits (e.g. semantic and legal interoperability), and 2) where different regional initiatives can learn from others and share good practices.
A series of forthcoming events on various continents will be used to progress this aim. These include:
– International Digital Curation Conference in Melbourne, Australia in February 2019. This is proposed as a venue for a planning meeting to prepare inputs to the RDA BoF, including a first draft typology / framework for analysis and comparison.
– Research Data Alliance Plenary 13 in Philadelphia, USA, in April 2019. This is proposed as a BoF session to begin a comparative mapping and agree WG scope and priorities.
– Session at European Commission conference being planned for Summer in Brussels
– Strand of sessions examining Open Science platforms and Research Infrastructures at the CODATA conference in Beijing, China, in September 2019, to enrich and populate the analysis with case studies of research infrastructures and their alignment in broader initiatives for Open Science platforms.
– Research Data Alliance Plenary 14 in Helsinki, Finland, in October 2019. This is proposed as the initial WG session which builds on the landscape analysis gathered in previous events and begins concrete work on agreed priorities.
 
Additional links to informative material
RDA BoF on Towards a Global Open Science Commons
SciDataCon session on Delivering a Global Open Science Commons
The International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC)
Principles for Open Scholarly infrastructures

Discussion