Second overview of NFDI collaborations published

Mon Jul 29 2024

The National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) in Germany has established itself and now comprises 26 consortia covering various disciplines. The main aim of the NFDI is to establish a cross-disciplinary research data infrastructure and to make scientific research more efficient. The initiative thus contributes to strengthening the research landscape in Germany and creates a solid foundation for future scientific breakthroughs.

DataPLANT is part of the initiative since the first funding round and already collaborating with various other consortia in a wide range of areas. These include, but are not limited to: education and training, outreach and communication, the portfolio to reuse and co-development of services as well as various forms of user support (e.g., through a collaborative helpdesk and knowledge base). This will strengthen existing services and foster the consolidation of infrastructures. The collaboration within the NFDI will increase the number of partnered consortia to evolve in response to growing and emerging demands. These activities ensure that we can adapt to new challenges and effectively incorporate target groups that were previously underrepresented geographically or topically e.g. in modelling or image analysis. DataPLANT concepts and services are already helping to advance RDM in other Life Science disciplines in the NFDI, so are also of interest to NFDI4BIOIMAGE. The growing intensity of collaboration will foster joint activities in terms of services, data, and research in RDM strategies in the shared research domains and beyond.

An overview from January 2023 described the extensive collaborative activities between the consortia. This collaboration is diverse and dynamic, which is reflected in the new publication from 2024. A tabular overview provides detailed information on the type and scope of those collaborations, the number of which has doubled since the last publication. DataPLANT is and has been involved in bilateral as well as multilateral collaborations and plans to intensify this networking in the future.

Further on, our consortium actively promotes DataPLANT’s ARC RO-Crate concepts in various national and NFDI contexts and in Life Science RDM workshops and is adapting this jointly with FAIRagro to the needs of the respective FAIRagro use cases as well. A project that combines both worlds was accepted by last year’s Biohackathon Germany (Enabling continuous RDM using Annotated Research Contexts with RO-Crate profiles for ISA), which led to a biweekly developer cycle to establish the ARC as an overarching joint concept. DataPLANT made further contextual or thematic connections with other consortia at the Love Data Week, and has worked with NFDI4Chem, NFDI4Health and NFDI-MatWerk for consultation on our solution to bridge the ontology gap. FDOs developed by DataPLANT are therefore being integrated into other areas of methodology. Among other things, the close cooperation is intended to harmonise interdisciplinary services in order to simplify their use for interdisciplinary scientists.