The second day of the US 10 year RDA celebration event in May 2023 brought together the RDA-US community to shape RDA-US moving forward. The feedback was overwhelmingly supportive for continuing a US-based community. We announced a newly envisioned RDA-US in Oct 2023 at the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Plenary 20 in Gothenburg, Sweden. It is time again for the RDA-US community to reenvision what works and what does not. We invite you to help us shape the future of RDA-US.
The RDA-US strategic plan over the last couple of years has been to advance responsible data sharing and open science and scholarship in the U.S. As your RDA-US program office, we serve as the official partner with global RDA representing the U.S. region, while advocating for and advancing solutions along three objectives:
- Foster the RDA-US community
- Aid US efforts in RDA through TIGRUS program
- Develop a voice in US to further US objectives in open science
Through this vision we have collectively realized substantial accomplishments by bringing together the community and leveraging RDA to progress the state of data (and software) sharing in the US. I see considerable opportunity for the RDA-US community to continue to engage in issues that matter, and to bring the mighty corpus of cross-continent RDA recommendations to bear on problems of relevance in the U.S.
While the RDA-US community is strong, national and state fiscal pressures in the U.S. have made it impossible for IU to continue to underwrite RDA-US beyond the end of Phase I (Dec 2025). RDA-US is thus seeking interest by an individual or group to take over managing RDA-US community engagement and the relationship with RDA. The TIGRUS (Targeted International working GRoups US) program will no longer continue either – its name and logo are available for use in a subsequent program.
Between now and the end of the calendar year, the RDA-US program office will continue to monitor the national landscape, engage with the RDA global organization, facilitate community interaction, and engage in ongoing commitments. We are additionally, in cooperation with the RDA-US Steering Committee, arranging a small group, 1.5 day workshop sometime in the first couple weeks of September 2025. We anticipate the workshop to be held at Carnegie Mellon University and have 15 people in attendance. Those in attendance will have interest and ability to help RDA-US move forward. Please reach out to us on our Slack channel or email us at rda-us@rda-foundation.org to share your interest in joining us at the workshop.
Warmest regards,
Beth Plale
RDA-US Executive Director