Research Data Framework (RDAF) Workshop

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is considering the development of a Research Data Framework, patterned on the well-known NIST Cybersecurity Framework (https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework) in which community consensus was established around “standards, guidelines, and best practices to manage cybersecurity-related risk.”  The Research Data Framework (RDaF) seeks to identify interests, obligations, costs, benefits, and risks surrounding the generation, analysis, curation, preservation, distribution, and re-use of research data.  This is a broad and dynamic environment, and it is already clear that few people or organizations fully comprehend the complexity of the research data ecosystem.  Many stakeholders share interests in research data (both produced through research or used by researchers in unanticipated contexts), including government agencies, funders (both public and private), data centers, repositories, universities and university associations, libraries, professional societies and associations, tool and infrastructure providers, academic publishers, policy organizations, advocacy groups, national and international data organizations, topical data initiatives, and, of course, individual researchers in all fields of science and humanities.  A number of stakeholders have multiple roles in this rich but complex space.  Open science and open data are trending and important topics, intersecting with key issues such as reproducibility, replicability, and reliability of research findings.

This invitation only event will bring together a broad cross section of stakeholders in research data to help frame the RDaF

The scoping workshop will address questions such as what is feasible, how should a full study be approached, and what would be the desired outcomes such that the RDaF has comparable value to the Cybersecurity Framework?  The workshop report would form the basis for the development of more detailed phases of the study, including possible schedules and associated resource estimates.  For example, one approach might be to have a pilot stage to identify two or three distinct research areas to analyze and use the results in a second stage to more fully plan and scope a full-scale Framework.

Our meeting location is the NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCOE) located just a few miles south of the NIST Gaithersburg, Maryland campus.

For more information, don’t hesitate to contact one of us or any member of the Steering Committee noted below:

robert.hanisch [at] nist.gov (Robert J. Hanisch), Director, Office of Data and Informatics, NIST Material Measurement Laboratory.

bcarroll [at] iiaweb.com (Bonnie C. Carroll), Founder and Chief Data Officer, Information International Associates.

RDaF Steering Group:

• Laura Biven, Advanced Science Computing Research, Office of Science, US Department of Energy
• Mercè Crosas, Chief Data Science and Technology Officer, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University
• Anita de Waard, VP of Research Collaborations, Elsevier
• Josh Greenberg, Director, Digital Information Technology Program, Sloan Foundation
• Hilary Hanahoe, Secretary General, Research Data Alliance
• Heather Joseph, Executive Director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
• Barend Mons, Leiden University Medical Center, President of CODATA, GO FAIR International Support and Coordination Office
• Beth Plale, Science Advisor for Public Access, Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, US National Science Foundation