Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RDA TIGER (Research Data Alliance facilitation of Targeted International working Groups for EOSC-related Research solutions)
Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-12-31
RDA TIGER (www.rd-alliance.org/rda-tiger) provided support services to Research Data Alliance (RDA) Working Groups (WGs) that concretely align, harmonise and standardise Open Science developments and technologies globally, with a focus on WGs that contribute to the EOSC and broader European ecosystem. Through the supported WGs and their careful selection based on criteria that demonstrate their alignment with the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), the project contributed to the EOSC Partnership and supported the international engagement and alignment of policies, technologies, methodologies, practices and other outputs relating to European Open Science developments. RDA TIGER leveraged the effective instrument of community-driven RDA WGs and the foundations of EOSC, RDA, CODATA, DANS, ReSA, and the broader Open Science movement, and highlighted the use of RDA for internationalisation and standardisation of research outputs that allow science to be reproducible and results and data to be shared openly. RDA TIGER’s focus on delivering carefully planned services to impactful WGs paired with systematic quality control and improvement mechanisms enabled its ambitious scope and aimed to maximise the project’s impact on the EOSC and broader European ecosystem, on the global RDA community and ultimately on the global Open Science environment.
During its pilot phase in 2023, RDA TIGER focused on the creation of the project services and associated WG selection processes and quality assurance mechanisms, testing them by leveraging the selected Pilot Demonstrator WGs in a real-world service provision context. The services were subsequently refined bringing on board community feedback. The project ran two open calls for cascading grants to enable the further development and adoption of RDA WG outputs, and launched the RDA Knowledge Base (www.kb-rda.org/) in 2025. RDA TIGER supported 25 WGs, provided 7 cascade grants, 10 travel grants for Plenary attendance and 9 external expert engagement grants. The services developed are:
Facilitation: Support from WG inception to completion, helping the formalisation of WGs within the RDA process, creating a work plan and maintaining it efficiently. Dedicated personnel provision to support WG co-chairs and membership, allowing them to concentrate on the subject matter. Communication: Support recruiting new members, amplifying milestone WG meetings, promoting outputs, creating materials, disseminating WG work in relevant fora and increasing awareness of the work of supported WGs both within and outwith the RDA. Output support: Support towards the end of WG operations, including ensuring that the outputs are created according to process, they are used by the relevant stakeholders, and they are properly documented and stored to enable their continued use after the end of the WG. Landscape and Engagement: Support towards increasing and broadening community participation in supported WGs by analysing the overall landscape related to the subject matter of the WG and supporting liaison with key potential stakeholders as identified in landscape analyses.
Facilitation: Support from WG inception to completion, helping the formalisation of WGs within the RDA process, creating a work plan and maintaining it efficiently. Dedicated personnel provision to support WG co-chairs and membership, allowing them to concentrate on the subject matter. Communication: Support recruiting new members, amplifying milestone WG meetings, promoting outputs, creating materials, disseminating WG work in relevant fora and increasing awareness of the work of supported WGs both within and outwith the RDA. Output support: Support towards the end of WG operations, including ensuring that the outputs are created according to process, they are used by the relevant stakeholders, and they are properly documented and stored to enable their continued use after the end of the WG. Landscape and Engagement: Support towards increasing and broadening community participation in supported WGs by analysing the overall landscape related to the subject matter of the WG and supporting liaison with key potential stakeholders as identified in landscape analyses.
RDA TIGER built on the existing, mature RDA infrastructure and processes for community-lead adoptable solutions. It aimed to strengthen the work of RDA WGs by providing a professionalised service platform, which would not only reduce the administrative burden of RDA WGs and support their membership in focusing on producing results, but also verbalise the major contributions of WGs in Europe. Results:
-An adaptable mature service model that addresses all components in the WGs lifecycle. Further uptake depends on available funding and industry interest in RDA as a venue for development of solutions.
-RDA TIGER concretised support mechanisms with documentation for each of its service components. All service documentation is available on Zenodo zenodo.org/communities/rda-tiger/records including the ‘WG Group Facilitation Best Practice Handbook’. Further exploitation is contingent on funding enabling the provision of such services to RDA at the same scale, regional funding opportunities where the service model(s) are adopted at a local level, and industry engagement with RDA.
-RDA outputs have the potential for formal standardisation, a time intensive and complex process. RDA TIGER consulted the Horizon Standardisation booster and developed a set of guidance and documentation in support of RDA WGs wishing to pursue standardisation of their outputs, available on www.kb-rda.org
-The ‘Facilitation Tips & Tools Guide’ is a distillation of lessons learned within the project and the RDA community, applicable to facilitators of groups in similar contexts. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18011922
-The RDA Knowledge Base enables making RDA solutions more finable, increasing their potential for adoption and reuse. Importantly, the RDA-KB allows the annotation of resources beyond those developed and published by RDA Groups, also extending to materials published elsewhere; this feature creates bridges between related work done in different contexts, thus building on existing community resources and results and avoiding duplication of effort.
-RDA TIGER verbalised the value of RDA outputs in addressing the broad range of challenges in the European setting. RDA outputs are widely adopted in Europe, and their use contributes to the EOSC ecosystem in many ways, but no single source detailing their contribution and potential impact existed previously. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17877370
-The project delivered a comprehensive documentation of the OS landscape, bringing together initiatives within and beyond EOSC. The Landscape analysis service fosters increased visibility and discoverability of RDA WGs by strengthening their integration within broader OS and EOSC-related initiatives. Sustainability pathways can be personalised or generic, participative or automatic for the future integration, reuse, and scaling of landscape results within European and international OS frameworks.
-‘10 Things for Running a Selection Committee’ is a resource that will be useful to other HE consortia running cascade grants and coordinating selection committees. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18033882
-An adaptable mature service model that addresses all components in the WGs lifecycle. Further uptake depends on available funding and industry interest in RDA as a venue for development of solutions.
-RDA TIGER concretised support mechanisms with documentation for each of its service components. All service documentation is available on Zenodo zenodo.org/communities/rda-tiger/records including the ‘WG Group Facilitation Best Practice Handbook’. Further exploitation is contingent on funding enabling the provision of such services to RDA at the same scale, regional funding opportunities where the service model(s) are adopted at a local level, and industry engagement with RDA.
-RDA outputs have the potential for formal standardisation, a time intensive and complex process. RDA TIGER consulted the Horizon Standardisation booster and developed a set of guidance and documentation in support of RDA WGs wishing to pursue standardisation of their outputs, available on www.kb-rda.org
-The ‘Facilitation Tips & Tools Guide’ is a distillation of lessons learned within the project and the RDA community, applicable to facilitators of groups in similar contexts. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18011922
-The RDA Knowledge Base enables making RDA solutions more finable, increasing their potential for adoption and reuse. Importantly, the RDA-KB allows the annotation of resources beyond those developed and published by RDA Groups, also extending to materials published elsewhere; this feature creates bridges between related work done in different contexts, thus building on existing community resources and results and avoiding duplication of effort.
-RDA TIGER verbalised the value of RDA outputs in addressing the broad range of challenges in the European setting. RDA outputs are widely adopted in Europe, and their use contributes to the EOSC ecosystem in many ways, but no single source detailing their contribution and potential impact existed previously. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17877370
-The project delivered a comprehensive documentation of the OS landscape, bringing together initiatives within and beyond EOSC. The Landscape analysis service fosters increased visibility and discoverability of RDA WGs by strengthening their integration within broader OS and EOSC-related initiatives. Sustainability pathways can be personalised or generic, participative or automatic for the future integration, reuse, and scaling of landscape results within European and international OS frameworks.
-‘10 Things for Running a Selection Committee’ is a resource that will be useful to other HE consortia running cascade grants and coordinating selection committees. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18033882