ICODA and RDA announce new joint partnership

18 December 2020 – The International COVID-19 Data Alliance (ICODA) and the Research Data Alliance (RDA) are organisations with related missions. RDA focuses on building the social and technical bridges that enable the open sharing and re-use of research data across all disciplines, all technologies and all countries; ICODA, convened by Health Data Research UK, focuses on building trustworthy international partnerships and enduring data infrastructure to support rapid responses to the current COVID-19 and future pandemics and other health challenges.

Given these complementary activities, ICODA’s affiliation with RDA is a natural fit. Coordination between the organisations will be beneficial to RDA, ICODA and their stakeholders, with potential to have genuine global impact in the vital area of data research for COVID-19.

The ICODA vision is to unite international health research data to enable discoveries that benefit everyone, everywhere and build a long-term alliance for making data accessible to health researchers and scientists around the world. Launched in mid-2020, ICODA is an open and inclusive organisation, with a set of principles that centre around equity, transparency and responsible data sharing.

As an Affiliate member of RDA, ICODA will support the use and dissemination of the RDA COVID-19 Working Group’s Recommendations and Guidelines on data sharing to ICODA partners and members.

In turn, RDA will support and disseminate information on ICODA activities, particularly a new Grand Challenges ICODA COVID-19 Data Science initiative, an open funding call which launched on 17 December.

The potential for future collaboration is substantial, starting with information sharing and the organisation of joint webinars.

‘As we move into 2021, the need for deeper global collaboration is going to be vital. This new affiliation between ICODA and RDA brings together organisations with shared values and a commitment to enabling access to data and trustworthy infrastructure, to address major global challenges, such as COVID-19.’
— Professor Andrew Morris, Director of Health Data Research UK and Chair of the ICODA Executive Team

‘RDA is delighted to announce this agreement with ICODA. We have followed the rapid progress of this fundamental initiative since its inception and we are very pleased to work together to identify common activities for the benefit of the community and society at large. The Research Data Alliance Guidelines and Recommendations on COVID19 data sharing are of value to all those who are creating and working with COVID19 data and we hope that ICODA can leverage on them for their activities.’
— Hilary Hanahoe, Secretary General, Research Data Alliance