As part of STM’s continued commitment to boost the effective sharing of research data, it was announced today that it had deepened its collaboration with the Research Data Alliance (RDA) – a community-driven initiative launched in 2013 which aims to build the social and technical infrastructure to enable open sharing and the re-use of data. A joint letter of intent was signed by STM’s CEO Ian Moss and RDA’s Secretary General Hilary Hanahoe at an online ceremony on the 13th July
Data sharing plays a vital role in ensuring research reproducibility and of preserving the integrity of the scholarly record. Good data practices improve the availability, discoverability and re-usability of research, whilst help aide the ongoing development of Open Science.
As part of STM’s Research Data Year the partnership aims to promote the uptake of standards and recommended practices that have been develop within and by RDA. The two organisations pledged to intensify their collaboration on:
- Promoting the adoption of Data Availability Statements (DASs) by academic journals as recommended by the RDA Interest Group on Data Policy Standardisation and implementation
- Increasing the uptake of SCHOLIX, the universal reference model for linking data and publications which was developed by the RDA / WDS Publishing Data Services Working Group
- Raising the consciousness of the data citation principles as recommended by RDA, DataCite and FORCE11
- Increase the awareness for RDA’s COVID-19 Research Data Recommendation and Guidelines
- Further socialising the TRUST Principles for digital repositories as produced by the RDA / WDS Certification of Digital Repositories
In addition, STM and RDA have agreed to share and exchange their expertise and experiences on FAIR research data sharing and will assist each other in relevant working groups, interest groups, steering committees, advisory boards and at workshops, seminars, events and conferences.
Speaking of the announcement Hilary Hanahoe, Secretary General of RDA said: “Publishers are a very important stakeholder for the Research Data Alliance and the open involvement of publishers in this global initiative is fundamental. Publishers have a major influence on the behaviour of researchers and data stewards and by working together we are succeeding in identifying concrete solutions for global Open
Science, open research, research data management. It is a great honour, on behalf of the Research Data Alliance, to strengthen, even further, the collaboration between RDA and STM.”
STM’s CEO Ian Moss added: “We’re delighted to be strengthening our ties to the Research Data Alliance. As an RDA Organisational Member, STM is well positioned to ensure that our publisher member organisations are encouraging their academic authors to share, link and cite research data alongside their publications. Through the amplification of research data sharing, both STM and RDA can help ensure the long-term integrity of research, as well as demonstrate the continued widening of publisher support for Open Science.
