Norms for contributing to and using RDA products

The goal of the RDA is to accelerate international data-driven innovation and discovery by facilitating and removing barriers to research data sharing and exchange. RDA develops a variety of products that help realize this goal. RDA seeks to have these products, especially formal “RDA Recommendations,” to be broadly adopted and used openly and ethically. As such, RDA has developed this set of norms that should guide the use of RDA products in keeping with RDA principles of openness, consensus-based decision making, balanced representation, technical neutrality, harmonization across communities and technologies, and a non-profit approach.

These initial norms will evolve in response to community needs.  By setting clear expectations for behavior, the RDA community can ensure that the RDA outputs become increasingly effective for collaboration and data sharing.

This policy is approved and maintained by the RDA Council. A subsidiary document, the Process and Criteria for RDA Recommendations, is maintained by the Secrtariat. Both documents are supported by the Norms for contributing to and using RDA products which, as norms not policy, are intended to be maintained as a community document.

This document supports the RDA Outputs and IP Policy and the Process and Criteria for RDA Recommendations. It is a community document and comments are welcome.

Contributors to RDA outputs.

1. RDA contributors should declare that they have no conflicts of interest in developing a particular Recommendation or other output.
2. RDA contributors must have the rights to contribute what they contribute and for those contributions to be used openly.
3. All work of contributors working in an RDA WG (meeting minutes, discussions, etc.) should be visible to all RDA members.
4. RDA contributors agree to have RDA Recommendations labeled as products of RDA.
5. RDA contributors have the right to be listed as authors of the products they contribute to in formal citations and acknowledgements.
6. RDA contributors allow their contributions to RDA Recommendations and Discussion Documents to be openly shared under the licenses or waivers required under the RDA Outputs and IP Policy (typically CC-BY 4.0 or CC0)
7. RDA contributors agree that, if requested, they will make reasonable efforts to provide additional information about their contributed materials to facilitate their use.
8. RDA contributors agree that they will make reasonable efforts to provide appropriate notification to the RDA community of any significant errors in their contributed materials or descriptions, if any are discovered after submission.

Users of RDA Recommendations

1. RDA users agree that they will acknowledge the RDA and the authors of the Recommendation including use of an appropriate citation when Recommendations are used in a formal research publication.
2. RDA users agree that they will make reasonable efforts to notify the RDA community about their use or adoption of RDA Recommendations, and about any suspected errors, limitations, or other problems that they may have discovered in their use of those materials.
3. RDA users acknowledge that they themselves are primarily responsible for determining whether the RDA Recommendations they use are of sufficient quality and appropriateness for their objectives.
4. RDA users recognize that by contributing back to RDA through RDA processes any modifications or adaptions of RDA Recommendations they help ensure ongoing interoperability and compatibility. To this end users agree to contribute back wherever possible.