GigaScience Press

Chris Hunter

Gothenburg, Sweden played host to the Research Data Alliance (RDA)
[RDA20
plenary](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.rd-alliance.org/plenaries/rda-20th-plenary-meeting-gothenburg-hybrid&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1680112038610413&usg=AOvVaw32tRTexPWk7lMdW6Rntxym)
from March 20th to 24th 2023. A hybrid event with most sessions recorded
and made available via the [Whova app for registered
participants](https://rdap20.events.whova.com/). Recordings will be made
available on Monday, 1 May 2023 to the wider community.

For the first in-person plenary since lockdown, the RDA celebrated its
10th year anniversary ([this being a good 12
months](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/birthday-at-ismb2022/) for
10-year anniversaries). The RDA20 plenary promised to be something
special. It delivered! 

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized">
<img
src="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Hilary-rda20-1024x513.jpg"
class="wp-image-4853" data-fetchpriority="high" decoding="async"
width="580" height="257" alt="RDA020 Plenary" />
<figcaption>580Fig1: Hilary Hanahoe (Secretary General, RDA) presenting
the number of attendees at RDA20</figcaption>
</figure>

The day before the actual plenary started (Monday 20th) as well as the
day after (Friday 24th), there were several co-located meetings being
held, so effectively it was a 5 day meeting. For many of the attendees
it was their first F2F meeting in 3 years due to the pandemic, so those
people found it particularly hard work staying actively engaged. 

We reconnected with our colleagues at DataCite on Monday at the
[DataCite connect
meeting](https://datacite.org/datacite-connect-2023.html). Readers of
t[his blog should
know](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/tag/datacite/) of our long-term
membership and use of their identifiers in GigaDB.

The main plenary days followed a schedule of keynotes in the morning
followed by parallel breakout sessions from mid-morning through to the
end of the day. The organisers had helpfully provided a set of suggested
[pathways](https://www.rd-alliance.org/rdas-20th-plenary-pathways) for
attendees to use based on the theme(s) of interest; one suggestion I
have to further improve this would be to include the days/times and
rooms of the suggested sessions to aid navigation at the event

Here I highlight a small selection of the presentation that I found
informative and interesting. [The Practical Approaches to Tracking and
Communicating the use of Research
Data](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.rd-alliance.org/practical-approaches-tracking-and-communicating-use-research-data&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1680112038611713&usg=AOvVaw2A6a4_z37JWKbZ223WIbQd)
session provided a summary of the [Data Usage Working Group
output](https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00062) which recommends 5 things : 

1: Data usage is complicated, while these complex areas will need to be
resolved, the focus should remain on the adoption of minimal frameworks
for counting data usage. 

2: Utilizing the [COUNTER Code of Practice for Research
Data](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.projectcounter.org/code-practice-research-data/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1680112038612683&usg=AOvVaw0uoTE9HfDb0ueMAFN0mqDw),
and utilizing DataCite for aggregations.

3: There should be caution against defaulting to data metrics like a
data impact factor.

4: Consider potential shortcomings, mitigations that can be made, and
broader use cases for implementation to better understand usage types.

5: Close coordination with
[Scholix](https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.scholix.org/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1680112038613139&usg=AOvVaw2sXCoPnoJ3oDdLYKuhhgno)
is recommended as usage and citation are closely tied together. 

[Matt
Buys](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7234-3684&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1680112038613800&usg=AOvVaw261ZLXsioHVggyZ26lx68J)
from DataCite followed with an update on the [Make Data Count
Initiative](https://makedatacount.org/), of which our team member Scott
Edmunds is on the [Advisory Board of](https://makedatacount.org/team/).
Which is a stable framework, but requires a broader adoption to make it
useful. Currently, we are in a slight chicken-and-egg situation with
repositories reluctant to offer the data metrics until someone provides
the specifications of what exactly should be provided. The funders are
not pushing for anything specific about data usage partly because they
don't know what is possible. Authors still focussed on journal citation
as a mechanism of reward, meaning they aren't particularly motivated to
push for data usage measuring.

One effort to jump-start the process is the Wellcome initiative to
create a global corpus of data citations and data mentions. The
initiative is gathering a corpus of references to published data within
[journal articles and pre-prints](https://doi.org/10.5438/vjz9-kx84). It
aims to provide a global set of measurable links that can be used to
explore what is possible and what is useful in terms of data usage
tracking.

[Kelly
Stathis](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6133-4045&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1680112038614614&usg=AOvVaw0A3cWgfOweZUt3W4Uf4jYZ)
(DataCite) presented the [DataCite Usage
Tracker](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://support.datacite.org/docs/datacite-usage-tracker&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1680112038615188&usg=AOvVaw2Kr07i33Mn6pXLgCZ7QcPQ)
(beta release). The goal of the tracker is to reduce the burden of
implementing usage tracking on repositories. The general idea is that a
repository embeds a small javascript in the landing page of the dataset.
This sends a message to the DataCite usage tracker every time someone
visits the page. In addition, another javascript can be embedded in a
download confirmation page which then counts the number of downloads of
that dataset.  This is a beta service at the moment, and one that GigaDB
intends to implement, so watch this space!

There were a number of sessions discussing software as research objects.
Including presentations from FAIR4RS and DOME-ML, as well as CodeMeta.
The latter is an attempt to standardise the way in which developers can
share the metadata about their software and code. Essentially it is a
JSON-LD schema that includes holders for all the important bits of
information that a potential user (either human or computer) may require
to use the software, e.g. the citation details, version number,
dependencies, environment, the status of code, community links, etc...

It wasn't all just presentation after presentation. Many of the sessions
included panel discussions to engage with the audiences. The co-located
workshops book-ending the meeting all included collaborative working
sessions to move the groups forward towards their respective goals. 

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized">
<img
src="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RDA20-town-hall-1024x768.jpg"
class="wp-image-4852" decoding="async"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RDA20-town-hall-1024x768.jpg 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RDA20-town-hall-300x225.jpg 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RDA20-town-hall-768x576.jpg 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RDA20-town-hall-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RDA20-town-hall.jpg 2048w"
sizes="(max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px" width="580" height="435" />
<figcaption>Gothenburg town hall, just before the RDA20 participants
arrived.</figcaption>
</figure>

No meeting would be complete without networking events. RDA20 provided
two such opportunities. First was the birthday celebration in the
fabulous town hall (see Fig2). As well as the conference dinner which
included live entertainment from the Chalmers University band-cum-circus
act!? Think big brass band meets circus clowns, you had to see it to
believe it.  
All-in-all the meeting was a great success, a tribute to all those
involved organising and participating in it. The next RDA installment
will be [International Data
Week](https://www.rd-alliance.org/plenaries/international-data-week-2023-salzburg)
in Salzburg 23-26 October 2023.

The post [RDA20 Plenary: A Decade of Data 2013-2023. Celebrating 10
years of the Research Data Alliance
(RDA)](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/rda20-a-decade-of-data-2013-2023/){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on
[GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.


Gothenburg, Sweden played host to the Research Data Alliance (RDA) RDA20 plenary from March 20th to 24th 2023. A hybrid event with most sessions recorded and made available via the Whova app for registered participants. Recordings will be made available on Monday, 1 May 2023 to the wider community.

Rogue Scholar Posts

RDA20 Plenary: A Decade of Data 2013-2023. Celebrating 10 years of the Research Data Alliance (RDA)