Activities
In order to effectively advance RDA’s core values of openly sharing data across technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the grand challenges of society (https://www.rd-alliance.org/), it is vital to develop an infrastructure and to facilitate community activities to decrease the technical and social barriers to data sharing. These activities should include a wide range of stakeholders from government, academia and even from the private sector with the primary aim of developing a consensus and a collaborative approach to open data management. To achieve a fast and wide uptake of RDA principles across all stakeholder groups, HRDA plans node activities in seven main directions: (1) awareness raising, (2) trainings, (3) forums to reconcile interests (4) creation of the Hungarian data repository network, (5) national golden nugget topic: artificial intelligence, (6) contributing to the work of RDA, (7) standardisation of existing data services, and (8) strengthening regional role in Central Eastern Europe.
1. Awareness raising
The advancement of a national data management agenda requires primarily awareness raising among involved stakeholders including trainings and skill development on the use of data. An advocacy program should be organized to familiarize the national research and data communities about the domestic and international landscape of research and data policies in order to effectively integrate the national initiatives into the international data discourse. Therefore, the presence of national institutions and associations in international forums (conferences, workshops, seminars) is crucial to exchange information and share best practices. Collaborations with international initiatives and programs, such as OpenAIRE, EOSC, FOSTER and other RDA nodes will also contribute to an exchange of best practices and know-hows in organizing workshops and conferences, since sharing experiences is vital in the developing global data discourse.
HRDA members have already organized several events including national and international workshops and conferences. MTA SZTAKI is a major player in the European research arena, a member of ERCIM, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics. Members of the Institute regularly organize international and global conferences. MTA SZTAKI together with other research institutions of MTA organised the very first national conference on research data management in 2015, where national research practices, policies, customs etc. were discussed and attendees were given a complete overview of actual problems and future prospects of research data management of the country. Such conferences provide a forum where besides the exchange of international and national knowledge and practices, communication and collaboration among stakeholders is facilitated. Therefore, a series of national events on RDM is going to be established as one of the core activities of the planned HRDA node.
The HUNOR association also organized several conferences and a national workshop on different aspects of open science (open peer review, EOSC, OpenAIRE). Based on the results of the Hungarian institutional open data survey, conducted by HUNOR within the framework of OpenAIRE in 2016, a follow-up workshop is planned to be organized to discuss with participating representatives the barriers institutions face in developing infrastructures for data sharing. The workshop also will focus on gathering good examples of how to increase uptake of data reuse among researchers and public sector users.
On the infrastructure side, KIFÜ is the co-organizer of the major e-Infrastructure conference in Hungary, NETWORKSHOP. The annual conference provides each year an opportunity to hundreds of developers, operators and users of the e-Infrastructure facilities and services, including the ones devoted to functions of data infrastructures. The conference definitely will be an excellent opportunity to build RDA and especially HRDA relations and collaboration in the future, among others by both demonstrating and strengthening the emergence of data-driven or data-intensive research.
A main landmark in the development of HRDA awareness raising program series is the organization of an RDA event in Hungary where new developments in the open science discourse regarding EOSC, FAIR principles, PlanS and the investment priorities on HPC infrastructures (Horizon Europe EUroHPC) will be presented and discussed.
2. Trainings
As increasing volumes of data are being created by researchers and research data management and data sharing has become an urging requirement, new sets of competencies and skills are in demand for researchers and professionals who support them. In order to strengthen data sharing and reuse, training/education to manage research data throughout the data lifecycle is essential involving not only researchers, but also their support professions (data scientists, data librarians, data managers, data analysts, research administrators, infrastructure providers and developers, etc.). The primary objectives of these trainings are, on the one hand, to provide information on standards, RDA recommendations and outputs, data skills, etc., and on the other hand, to advance the practical application of this knowledge.
Webinars and training events will inform the wider research communities on the benefits of data reuse and the main principles of data management. Following the previous training events organized by MTA SZTAKI together with MTA Wigner Data Center on the use of MTA Cloud, a new series of events will be organized in which the subjects will be extended towards FAIR data management.
KIFÜ, as the e-Infrastructure provider for the entire research, education, and public collection communities in Hungary, brings under the HRDA umbrella a wide user community consisting of some 5000 institutions (including, at the higher end, universities, and research organisations and, at the lower end, the primary and secondary schools of the Hungarian “schoolnet” community). Training events, seminars and webinars will be essential to connect to the wide scope of data providers and users and coordinate their data management activities through standards and guidelines provided by RDA.
3. Reconciliation of interests
Besides the conferences and workshops where various stakeholders have the opportunity to familiarize with different user viewpoints, demands and requirements, events should be organized for decision makers where the current state of knowledge, challenges and opportunities could be exchanged and discussed. A high level expert meetings, including decision makers from the government, academia and the private sector, will be organized to align views and efforts on developing data systems and infrastructures.
Overall, HRDA plans to contribute to a wide range of national and international activities of RDA, by taking part in organising data oriented influential conferences, workshops, training courses, etc. in order to make the RDA mission, recommendations and outputs and strategy well known and well understood on the national and European level. The planned events (several local and national workshops, an RDA conference, training events connected to Hungarian conferences, and a high level expert meeting) will produce reports and communication materials which will be available for reuse on the HRDA website. The dissemination and communication strategy of the project will also utilize a social media presence in order to maximize the outreach to interested stakeholders.
HRDA and the member organizations also intend to delegate attendees to events organised by RDA and will search for talented experts available to contribute to concrete RDA activities (eg. preparing evaluations, reports, forecasts, rfc drafts, etc. in the data management - data economy - data research areas).
4. Creation of the Hungarian data repository network (national data infrastructure)
Developing the national data infrastructure could only proceed with the collaboration of the different communities involved (IT, library, researchers). The already existing publication repository network (HUNOR) and experiences of its members could be utilised. A core component of the infrastructure could be a certification service. (Experiences in Hungary and abroad show that the investment needed to achieve international certification could be a serious obstacle. A national certification system could help repositories to eventually certificate themselves internationally.) Nation-wide aggregation could be meaningful from several aspects – one of them is aggregating data produced by local horizon projects in the social sciences and humanities. A national aggregator could be developed on the basis of the present publication aggregator service developed and run by MTA SZTAKI and MTA KIK. All published datasets should have permanent identifiers. MTA KIK could provide DOIs through DataCite – it could be done free of charge for the depositing parties. Developing scientometric tools is a must – datasets can already be recorded in the national CRIS system (MTMT), but the system should be refined and extended.
5. National Golden nugget topic: artificial intelligence
In 2018 a new nationwide initiative was launched by the Hungarian government: the Hungarian Artificial Intelligent Coalition (AI Coalition) was established. One of the major aims of this initiative is to foster the research, development and application of AI technologies in Hungary, providing a professional collaboration forum and a joint strategic decision space for the relevant AI stakeholders: researchers, developers, users, market and/or non for profit organisations. All important aspects of the use of AI, the potential impact at a social level as well as the economic prospects of the application of these technologies are to be discussed and analysed under the umbrella of this initiative, comprising hundreds of corporations, academic and governmental institutions. The importance to apply AI solutions in different domains from autonomous cars to health care is clearly understood at the highest decision making levels.
One of the major components of the actual dialogue within the AI Coalition is the handling and use of data, research data, large scale data spaces for AI activities such as development of AI solutions, and of data management activities enabled by the use of AI technologies. New data handling infrastructures as integrated parts of the digital ecosystem of the country are to be planned for AI.
The AI Coalition initiative could be considered as one of the major, strategic level partners of the Hungarian RDA node in all data management related activities. Even a large-scale overlapping could be revealed in the membership and participation in both initiatives.
Deliverables:
1. Joint project group activities between members of AI Coalition and HRDA
2. Contribution to the work of Big Data IG of RDA
3. Contribution to standards related to the use of data in AI
4. Training events in Hungary related to AI and data
KPI:
1. 3 joint project group activities between members of AI Coalition and HRDA
2. 2 contributions to the work of Big Data IG of RDA
3. 2 contributions to standards related to the use of data in AI
4. 2 training events in Hungary related to AI and data
6. Contributing to the work of RDA
HRDA will promote RDA, its objectives, working groups and interest groups. From 2019 HRDA will organise training for non HRDA members. The training program starts with general RDA and EU data policies and will be followed by concrete RDA recommendation or ICT specification training block.
HRDA members screen and apply to the existing WG-s IG-s including to the Group of European Data Experts (GEDE) group. Our plan is to
• Increase our membership in GEDE and in RDA WG-s IG-s with a special focus on ICT specifications.
• Update the RDA Europe webpage with the news on HRDA activities
• Start bilateral connections with other RDA nodes via video conferences
• Be present at least by one representative of HRDA in RDA Plenary events, including the regional assembly, and by one early career participant.
• Perform feasibility study on the possible organisation of one of the upcoming RDA Plenary Meetings in Hungary (and prepare the application for it in case of positive outcome).
7. Standardisation of existing data services
vHRDA members will actively participate in the development of new standards by various working groups of RDA. There are several existing, freely available databases and services containing research data in Hungary. The problem is, that those databases are often rely on non-standard techniques – they do not use permanent identifiers, standard protocols or data formats. HRDA should approach the institutions and research groups operating these services and offer advice and support for developing compliance with the FAIR principles. For these institutions and research groups we will organize training and other events to transfer the knowledge of data standards developed by RDA in order to apply these standards in their daily work of building their own databases. We will also encourage these institutions and research groups to contribute to the development process of new standards related to their scientific fields.
8. Strengthening regional role in Central Eastern Europe
HRDA wishes to be recognised as an important RDA national node in Central Eastern Europe, combining the existing knowledge and talent in the region with the professional excellence of RDA at European and Global level. Our model will consider the longstanding challenge between Eu15 and EU13, namely the difference in Research infrastructure, and lower level of participation in EU research in general.