News Bulletin September 2013

Welcome to the autumn edition of the EUDAT News Bulletin! These short email bulletins are sent, roughly once a month, to keep you updated about the latest news and developments from EUDAT.

Have you registered for the upcoming EUDAT Conference yet? This year it will be held in Rome on 28-30 October. The conference will provide a great opportunity for everyone who is working with digital data to engage with EUDAT members and other data experts. International e-infrastructure cooperation and collaboration benefits are high on the agenda, with keynotes by Richard Frackowiak (on the Human Brain flagship project), Ewan Birney (on Annotating the Human Genome), Maryline Lengert (on Helix-Nebula the Science Cloud), and a view from across the Atlantic from Bill Michener (on DataONE). Progress reports on a series of Research Data Alliance (RDA) activities and working groups will round up the event.

A full day of training will be provided on the 28th for those interested in getting hands-on expertise in moving data, working with metadata, and integrating PIDs. On the 29th and 30th parallel tracks will offer participants a complete presentation of the first set of EUDAT services (Safe Replication, Data Staging, Simple Store, and Metadata Catalogue) and new services that are in the pipeline (such as Dynamic Data and Semantic Service). Federated AAI, identifiers, and public-private partnerships will be discussed in a track focusing on interoperability, while a fourth track on Policy and Sustainability issues will address data management plans, data access and reuse policies, and cost and funding models.

This year we are also hosting a number of associated workshops (to be held on Monday 28th and Wednesday 30th October). If you are looking to delve into the policy aspects of research data management with senior representatives from funding bodies, infrastructure providers, research institutions, publishers and researchers, visit the SIM4RDM workshop on the 28th. Those of you interested in learning from data sharing across the boundaries of communities and organisations to allow reuse of data in contexts other than those for which it has been generated will find plenty of insights at the workshop jointly organised by iMarine and Lifewatch. If big data technologies and ultra-scalable data management technologies are your thing, then CUMULONIMBO is organising a workshop to disseminate their project findings in this area. In the workshop "Scientific Data Infrastructures - Visions of the Future" experts active in the SSH field will discuss how to respond to the waves of technological disruptions that are impacting not only business and government organisations but also institutions performing scientific research. On the 30th, the Digital Heritage Community will host a workshop on e-infrastructure collaboration in the area of cultural heritage, and finally the European Persistent Identifier Consortium (EPIC) will hold its annual EPIC user meeting at the Conference and look at on-going internal issues like governance, cooperation, reliability and performance of systems, as well as further planned developments in the area of identifiers.

Through plenary sessions, parallel tracks, training courses and associated workshops, participants are offered a 360° view of EUDAT's existing and future services and how they will benefit both researchers and research organisations in accessing and preserving their research data. Check out the rich three day programme at www.eudat.eu/events/programme-eudat-2nd-conference and register on-line. Don't miss the early bird registration deadline on 30th September. You can also follow EUDAT on Twitter @eudat_eu for conference updates and watch our regular blog posts for additional insights - for example, Peter Wittenburg and Daan Broeder on the ESFRI cluster projects.

EUDAT will be offering a range of training tracks at the EUDAT conference, covering issues such as Data Staging, Data Replication, PIDs and Metadata. For more information, see http://www.eudat.eu/eudat-2nd-conference-training-tracks. We also have various training events in the pipeline for the coming months: we are exploring a joint event with DataOne at a major Earth Science meeting in San Francisco for December, and in January we will run another course on data staging and related topics at EPCC's PRACE Advanced Training Centre. Further details will be made available here once the events are confirmed.

EUDAT's training coordinator, Adam Carter, has written a blog article which summarises what EUDAT has been up to over the summer in terms of training. You can read Adam's blog and find out about our courses with APARSEN, PRACE, VPH and EPOS, and also download the material that was presented at the courses here: www.eudat.eu/blog/update-eudat-training-over-summer.

If you are unable to join us in Rome this autumn for the EUDAT conference, you can meet us at any of the following events to catch up on the discussions: the VAMP workshop and the FIM4R and REFEDS meeting in Helsinki, the DASISH SSH workshop in Gothenburg and the 9th IEEE International Conference on e-Science in Beijing.