How to organise RDA activities at the French level

RDA is an international community-driven organization which aims at building the social and technical bridges that enable open sharing of data. Created on March 2013, it currently has 6,600 members from 135 countries. It is a remarkable, neutral international forum which tackles a wide variety of subjects in its more than 90 Working and Interest Groups.

The European Commission has been supporting RDA activities through a series of RDA Europe projects since the beginning. The current one, RDA Europe 4.0 (led by Trust-IT), aims at developing National nodes (9 in a first stage). CNRS is in charge of the French RDA node with the following tasks:

• develop, organize and manage the RDA national community,
• interact with the key players of the national research landscape: research institutions, universities, funding bodies, scientific communities,
• promote RDA activities: (open calls, plenary meetings,... ) and encourage participation in working and interest groups,
• organize events (meetings, workshops, training courses,...) to disseminate and stimulate adoption of RDA outputs.

The national research landscape is complex: universities, research organizations, grandes écoles, with scientific communities at varying stages of maturity concerning the management of their data, and support staff (computer scientists, librarians) still insufficiently aware/trained in data management and sharing.

The challenge will, therefore, be to unite these components behind the RDA banner, in particular by encouraging cooperation between researchers, computer scientists and information professionals. In addition, the national node will communicate as foreseen with the different actors of the research landscape to disseminate knowledge about RDA activities, and define its role in the national programme for Open Science, which is developed by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, to prepare
for longer-term sustainability.

The position paper will present the different actions launched, discussing their applicability beyond the national context.