Further exchange with the DFG and NFDI directorate on future community integration and onboarding

Mon Jul 26 2021

To advance the understanding and developing its role DataPLANT exchanged ideas with Ms. Kerremans from the DFG and Mr. Sure-Vetter from the NFDI Association on future community integration and onboarding of new participants. The topics we had already talked about e.g. at the NFDI Infratalks were discussed further: long term development and sustainability of the NFDI and the onboarding process. DataPLANT was able to place some points and present ideas that need to be developed further step by step, e.g. by putting it into a strategy paper. In addition to it, there were aspects that still needed some thought/formulation and that should certainly be discussed:

{width=2%} Actual workflow/process when setting up a research proposal (coming from the various NFDI communities): Implementing a short interaction and review process to produce a NFDI endorsement on it (e.g. in the form of half page for reviewers to acknowledge previous interaction).

{width=2%} In this (application) process the type of further involvement with appropriate scoping will be defined: embedding (tight integration), consulting (in some aspects), not relevant (no suitable common ground; referring to local support).

For this data stewards were seen as important building blocks of such future workflows. Overall, new approaches to the DFG proposal process were considered favorably, and reviewers of the various types of grant applications should be briefed accordingly to improve the common understanding of the process. Nevertheless, applicants (and supporting consortia) are still obliged to justify the individual steps (access to resource pools, consulting, services, data stewards). Additionally, it was seen important to distinguish between the different requirements and expectations of individual SFBs, GRKs, (project proposals):

{width=2%} Subject-specific (standardization, infrastructure, workflow support, …) via NFDI/subject consortium.

{width=2%} Direct local support for university infrastructures and resources (more general RDM, training, local helpdesk).

{width=2%} Requirements arising outside these two areas (e.g. necessary special developments) should still follow the classical INF model.

To further the discussion, the topic will be discussed again in more detail in the Baden-Wuerttemberg Science Data Center working group on “Business Models” on behalf of the sibling project BioDATEN.

Further on the suggestions of DataPLANT’s onboarding procedure got agreed upon and refined:

{width=2%} Since there are no (re)distributable funds involved, no formal process via DFG is required.

{width=2%} DataPLANT will continue to follow the already established path formalizing the connection through Letter-of-Interest (by the applicants) and Letter-of-Support (by the consortium) or similar formats.

To support this electronically, DataPLANT plans to integrate a “Become a member” button/page into the Science Gateway. A further advancement could be, that the information on participation is pushed into the ORCID profile of the researchers. This should help us to better communicate with the community.