The establishment of a Norwegian node in RDA

Norway has been selected as a new national node in RDA (Research Data Alliance). Until the end of the project in May 2020, the node will be engaging with research communities, supporting national agendas, and contributing to the EU Open Science Strategy to ensure capillary uptake of RDA principles and outputs. Moreover, they will be working to increase the participation in RDA nationally. The Norwegian RDA node (NO-RDA) will be run by a consortium of seven partners, each of them with specific roles in the activities around the node, and led by NSD - Norwegian Centre for Research Data. NO-RDA will focus on supporting the implementation of RDA outputs and recommendations and on areas of strategic importance for the Nordic region, such as Data Management Plans, FAIR Data Stewardship and management of sensitive data in research within the framework of current international and statutory regulations. In addition to NSD the node consists of NTNU, UiB, UiO, UiT, Unit og Uninett/Sigma2. The Research Data Alliance (RDA) was launched as a community-driven initiative in 2013 by the European Commission, the United States Government's National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Australian Government’s Department of Innovation with the goal of building the social and technical infrastructure to enable open sharing and re-use of data. RDA has a grass-roots, inclusive approach covering all data lifecycle stages, engaging data producers, users and stewards, addressing data exchange, processing, and storage. It has succeeded in creating the neutral social platform where international research data experts meet to exchange views and to agree on topics including social hurdles on data sharing, education and training challenges, data management plans and certification of data repositories, disciplinary and interdisciplinary interoperability, as well as technological aspects.