What did you say there Skippy? Learning from our Aussie neighbours

 

Photo of gray kangaroo by Ivan Lojko

 

From mid-July to mid-September, the DCC’s Sarah Jones will be working remotely on placement with the Australian Research Data Commons. ARDC is a transformational initiative akin to the European Open Science Cloud, which draws together leading-edge data intensive eInfrastructure, platforms, skills and collections of high-quality data. It is supported by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and is built on the legacies of initiatives such as the Australian National Data Service (ANDS), National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (Nectar) and the Research Data Services (RDS).

 

Sarah will be in Australia on behalf of the EOSC Executive Board to attend the ARDC Skills Summit and meet with relevant data stakeholders to explore what lessons can be learned from their work to inform European initiatives. She’ll be based primarily at the ARDC offices in Melbourne, but will also visit Brisbane and Sydney and meet with CSIRO, various universities and some partners in recent ARDC Data and Services Discovery projects.

 

If you’re doing relevant data work and want to catch up, drop her a line:

Time will also be spent on shared DCC/ARDC interests, for example developing the RISE model, support for Data Management Plans and FAIR implementation. Sarah will also share lessons from Research Data Alliance work in Europe. The 15th plenary will take place in Australia between March and May 2020. As a run up for this, Secretary General, Hilary Hanahoe, will be touring Australia in July-August. Check out where you can meet up with her here.

 

The world may seem a big place and an entire day spent in the air is testament to its impressive scale, but when it comes to FAIR practices and barriers to data sharing, much remains relevant despite our geographic, cultural and disciplinary boundaries. There is more that unites than divides us, so learning from our very distant neighbours and addressing issues as one big global community is key.