Collaborating with Our Korean Neighbours on Building a World-Class Data System

Banner image: Signing of the MoU between ARDC and KISTI

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) are seeking advice from international  organisations, including the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), on the development of their national data system.

Korea has been searching to find world’s best practices regarding research and innovative data services to ensure that their Korean Research Data Platform (KRDP) embodies global excellence for their country and their researchers.

In July a group of five KISTI personnel, led by KISTI president Dr Hee-yoon Choi visited the Sydney ARDC offices and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the ARDC to formalise the collaboration between KISTI and the ARDC.

Rosie Hicks, the ARDC CEO says we are excited to be collaborating with KISTI and to embark on open exchange of knowledge around data management and services, software and research infrastructure.

“We look forward to a fruitful partnership between our organisations, collaborating on research infrastructure to support, enable and transform today and tomorrow’s research and innovation,” Rosie Hicks said.

Korea has been building the Korea Research Data Platform (KRDP) since 2018 with the intention that it should systematically support researchers to share, manage, search, analyse and use research data. It provides researchers with a Research Data Analysis Framework (RDAF) that includes access to KISTI’s supercomputer Nurion. Collaborative research has been taking place on the interaction between ARDC and KISTI services. This includes analysing metadata scheme interoperability and methodology between Research Data Australia (RDA) and KRDP.

“Through close cooperation between KISTI and ARDC, including not only simply sharing research data but also joint development of efficient research data analysis and utilisation technology, we will make efforts to help improve Korea’s R&D productivity and innovation,” Dr Choi said.

The Korean government says that research data is important for the nation and is looking for countries that have managed research data successfully. Dr Min-ho Lee, a principal researcher from KISTI Research Data Sharing Center, has been embedded in the ARDC offices for the past few months in order to gain a deep understanding of how the ARDC functions and how it manages world-class data and provides cloud and data storage services to the Australian research sector. In Dr Lee’s words he is looking for the “secret sauce” that has made Australia’s research data environment so successful.

Through the ARDC, KISTI is able to connect with other NCRIS initiatives such as National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), to dig deeper into how Australia is providing Australian researchers competitive advantage through research infrastructure and data services.