Knowledge Exchange's A Surfboard for Riding the Wave report calls for a collaborative data infrastructure to enable researchers to use, re-use and exploit research data to benefit scientific research, and society more generally.

Research data are seen as an integral part of the research infrastructure - as important and necessary to research as high speed networks and computing facilities.

This vision is enthusiastically supported by many scientific organisations in Europe, including the Knowledge Exchange partners:

• Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF)
• German Research Foundation (DFG)
• Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the United Kingdom
• SURFfoundation (Denmark)

The report examines the current state of data sharing and infastructure in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It looks at what concrete steps the partners should take to realise the vision of a collaborative science data infrastructure.

Knowledge Exchange (KE) is a co-operative effort that supports the development and use of ICT infrastructure for higher education and research.

This report includes a diagram of what the scientific data sharing infastructure should look like by 2030. The diagram was developed by the High Level Expert Group on Scientific Data in their 2010 submission to the European Commission, Riding the wave: How Europe can gain from the rising tide of scientific data.

It involves seamless access, use, re-use and trust of data.