The Research Data Alliance (RDA) celebrates its 10-year anniversary this year, and the RDA-US also celebrates its decadal birthday, having been formed at the same time as RDA to focus global RDA activity on regional challenges. RDA-US is using this milestone as an opportunity to celebrate the community of US members who have contributed leadership, support, and ideas to numerous RDA outputs and guidance documents over the decade.
RDA-US is also at a turning point. Rebecca Koskela, RDA-US Executive Director, who has artfully led RDA-US for the last 4 years, will be stepping down from her post and onto her next adventure in retirement. Rebecca has overseen the formation of the Region of the Americas, which contributed to a 20% growth in individual members to the RDA. She has led a successful 3-year webinar series that has both Spanish and French channels, and co-chaired the RDA Regional Advisory Board. “I am proud of what we’ve accomplished for RDA and the Americas,“ said Ms. Koskela.
RDA-US is pleased to announce that Dr. Beth Plale has agreed to assume the leadership role of RDA-US. An early founder of RDA and the Executive Director of the Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University, Dr. Plale’s numerous contributions to RDA include guidance on PIDs, data fabric infrastructure, a US early-career program, and inaugural co-chair of RDA’s Technical Advisory Board.
In 2022, RDA-US embarked on a strategic visioning exercise to review its strengths and direction. As an outcome, the strategic vision for RDA-US going forward is as an organizational entity dedicated to amplifying the voice and expertise of the RDA-US community and capitalizing on the products and approaches embodied in RDA-endorsed contributions, both targeting urgent challenges of open science and reproducible science and scholarship facing the US as captured in the OSTP Nelson memo. RDA-US will accomplish its work in partnership with other organizations, and continue close coordination with global RDA.
The RDA-US community is strong. Many members have been part of the community from the inception of RDA. The community represents substantial expertise, experience, and commitment that can serve as a collective voice. The RDA-US community has contributed significantly to the success of RDA as well. In partnership with volunteers and organizations across the world, RDA-US has developed consensus solutions and approaches to research data sharing that have been tested and contextualized in various settings locally and internationally (e.g., policies, approaches, infrastructure architecting, tool requirements).
“I’m honored to have the opportunity to lead RDA-US in this next phase”, says Dr. Plale. “The OSTP year of Open Science is a challenge to which RDA-US can amply contribute and is excited to embark upon.”