NIST Research Data Framework (RDaF)
Authors: Hanisch Robert , Kaiser Debra , Yuan Alda , Medina-Smith Andrea , Carroll Bonnie , Campo Eva 
Published: December 2023

The NIST Research Data Framework (RDaF) is a multifaceted and
customizable tool that aims to help shape the future of open data access and
research data management (RDM). The RDaF will allow organizations and
individual researchers to develop their own RDM strategy. Though NIST is
leading the RDaF, most of the content in the current version 2.0, which
supersedes preliminary V1.0 and interim V1.5, was obtained via engagement
with national and international leaders in the research data community. NIST
held a series of three plenary and 15 stakeholder workshops from October
2021 to September 2023. Workshop attendees represented many stakeholder
sectors: US government agencies, national laboratories, academia, industry,
non-profit organizations, publishers, professional societies, trade
organizations, and funders (public and private), including international
organizations. The audience for the RDaF is the entire research data
community in all disciplines—the biological, chemical, medical, social, and
physical sciences and the humanities. The RDaF is applicable from the
organization to the project level and encompasses a wide array of job roles
involving RDM, from executives and Chief Data Officers to publishers,
funders, and researchers. The RDaF is a map of the research data space that
uses a lifecycle approach with six stages to organize key information
concerning RDM and research data dissemination. Through a community-driven
and in-depth process, NIST identified and defined specific, high-priority
topics and subtopics for each lifecycle stage. The topics and subtopics are
programmatic and operational activities, concepts, and other important
factors relevant to RDM which form the foundation of the framework. This
foundation enables organizations and individual researchers to use the RDaF
for self-assessment of their RDM status. Each subtopic has several
informative references—resources such as guidelines, standards, and
policies—to help a user understand or implement that subtopic. As such, the
RDaF may be considered a “best practices” document. Fourteen overarching
themes—topic areas identified as pervasive throughout the
framework—illustrate the connections among the six lifecycle stages.
Finally, the RDaF includes eight sample profiles for common job functions or
roles. Each profile contains topics and subtopics an individual in the given
role needs to consider in fulfilling their RDM responsibilities. Individual
researchers and organizations involved in the research data lifecycle will
be able to tailor these sample profiles or generate entirely new profiles
for their specific job function. The methodologies used to generate the
content of this publication, RDaF V2.0, are described in detail. An
interactive web application has been developed and released that provides an
interface for all the components of the RDaF mentioned above and replicates
this document. The web application is easy and intuitive to navigate and
provides new functionality enabled by the interactive environment.