RDA TIGER D3.4 Second OS Landscape analysis and potential engagement targets

This report is intended to update and extend the ground covered by the earlier RDA TIGER WP3 deliverable D3.1, submitted in June 2023. It does not reproduce content from that earlier overview but attempts to provide a summary of relevant activity occurring in the last 15 months and its relationship to the RDA ecosystem. In doing so, the primary purpose of this document is to support the landscape research activities within WP3 as well as the other services of the project, as follows: Facilitation of the Working Groups’ internal processes (WP5), by documenting and summarising the changes in the landscape; Communication support (WP2), by identifying stakeholders that could have a particularly keen interest in the outputs of the supported Working Group; Output support (WP4), by gathering information related to organisation and external publications that can be included in the Maintenance Platform once the technical developments have been completed. More broadly, we also hope that the document is helpful to anyone interested in the recent developments in EOSC- and FAIR data-related activities. To support this broader use, the document provides extensive links to the background material, primarily as footnotes to make it as easy as possible to access the background material with minimal disruption of the reading (or browsing) process of the document itself. Building upon D3.1 content, we provide an update on the progress to date with preparing the contents of the RDA graph database, its impact on RDA TIGER activity, and how it contributes to the OS landscape work that informs the landscape awareness service. We also analyse the themes and topics that appear to be developing amongst recent global Open Science initiatives and activities, and the extent to which these are reflected in the nascent and emerging RDA Working Groups supported by RDA TIGER support services. We also offer some observations on apparent gaps in provision of RDA Working Groups that tackle contemporary Open Science issues as mapped i) against the current EOSC SRIA aims, and ii) geographically. However, we do not attempt to perform advanced analysis of the observed developments for two reasons: The Maintenance Platform will provide tools to directly support many of the analysis tasks, both statistical ones (e.g., number of publications per year, languages used) and network analysis (co-authorship, topics of interest, institutions,...). The impact of any particular development is highly dependent on the focus of the Working Group supported and the extent of its progress. Nevertheless, we observed a few common trends that are relevant for the project as a whole, as well as for the future support activities that will eventually supersede the role RDA TIGER is currently playing. The first such observation is the relatively rapid increase in the number of RDA WGs, from 47 in June 2023 to 59 in October 2024, with further seven waiting for endorsement. In parallel with this increase, the proportion of WGs focused on domain specific issues has grown. These trends should be seen both as an asset (growing community with greater diversity leading to new cross-pollination opportunities) and a challenge (renewed efforts as well as new tools and approaches to maintain a coherent overview of the activities are needed). Furthermore, additional efforts are needed to balance the participation across geographical areas and language groups. Successfully addressing these challenges will mean that the RDA and the RDA TIGER project could be even more efficient and effective in supporting alignment of EOSC and other European FAIR-data related initiatives with global developments.