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New research data repositories for chemistry and cultural heritage

Researchers in the fields of chemistry and cultural studies now have access to new services for publishing research data. These are based on the established RADAR repository from FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure.

As part of its collaboration in NFDI4Chem, FIZ Karlsruhe now offers “RADAR4Chem”, a powerful service for researchers in the field of chemistry to easily publish their research data. RADAR4Chem complements the existing portfolio of subject repositories in chemistry and can be used by researchers free of charge and regardless of their institutional affiliation. It enables the publication of any data type and format, thereby offering various application scenarios. Another new repository called RADAR4Culture similarly addresses the cultural sciences and humanities.

The NFDI aims to build on existing infrastructures and services and make them interoperable. In this context, discipline-specific repositories for the publication and long-term archiving of digital research data are of particular importance for the scientific communities. However, existing offerings do not cover all relevant use cases in scientific practice, as analyses by the NFDI consortia have shown. A generically oriented data repository such as RADAR from FIZ Karlsruhe can help close these gaps.

RADAR is a service designed to meet the needs of researchers and has proven its worth over several years. So far, it has been used primarily by academic institutions for institutional research data management. In keeping with its claim to sustainability, FIZ Karlsruhe is now making RADAR directly accessible to researchers and adapting the service for the two new offerings – RADAR4Chem and RADAR4Culture – to the respective discipline-specific requirements.

Dr. Felix Bach, head of the research data department at FIZ Karlsruhe and co-spokesperson of NFDI4Chem, explains: “RADAR4Chem and RADAR4Culture expand the range of options for FAIR data publication in the disciplines of chemistry and cultural sciences and humanities within the framework of the NFDI. Hereby, we provide scientists with a low-threshold solution that enables them to publish digital data together with descriptive metadata and Digital Object Identifiers (DOI). “

“With NFDI4Chem, we want to initiate a cultural change in research data management in chemistry,” says Christoph Steinbeck, Professor of Analytical Chemistry, Chemical Informatics and Chemometrics at the University of Jena and NFDI4Chem spokesperson. “To do this, we need powerful and reliable tools from renowned partners, such as RADAR4Chem from FIZ-Karlsruhe. With it, a repository is launched that researchers can rely on and that enables the storage of data without major hurdles.”

Prof. York Sure-Vetter, director of the NFDI, also considers the launch of RADAR4Chem and RADAR4Culture an important achievement: “To make data treasures available on a broad scale, research data management is needed that starts with the researchers themselves. The services RADAR4Chem and RADAR4Culture enable academics to share (meta)data with their communities and ensure their reusability. Both data repositories thus are an essential step towards a sustainable research data management and a crucial milestone for NFDI.”

The technical infrastructure for RADAR is operated in Germany and is therefore subject to German law. For RADAR4Chem and RADAR4Culture, a storage quota is provided free of charge by FIZ Karlsruhe and the cooperating data centres at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Technical University (TU) Dresden. This means that researchers who want to make their data available FAIRly do not have to pay any publication or usage fees. Like RADAR, the two new services also enable the publication of any data types and formats and thus allow a wide range of application scenarios.

Researchers from the respective subject communities who would like to use RADAR services can find more information on the websites of FIZ Karlsruhe and the subject consortia NFDI4Chem and NFDI4Culture.

The NFDI network collects information about resources for scientists from Ukraine

Putin’s war against Ukraine has left the world in shock. NFDI4Chem stands in solidarity with the people in Ukraine.

The NFDI head office is collecting links, contact addresses and services that can help affected scientists from Ukraine. They can be found under the following link:
https://www.nfdi.de/important-links-for-scientists-from-ukraine/?lang=en

The helpdesk at NFDI4Chem is also available to help connect those in need with partners in our network all over Germany.

NFDI4Chem Advisory Boards

NFDI4Chem has assembled its Advisory Boards (ABs). With five to six members each, they represent four different communities: industry, publishers, the national and the international research community.

The ABs provide independent and scientific support and advice to the consortium. They assist NFDI4Chem in ensuring the project’s strategy and progress in terms of meeting the project’s objectives.

Following suggestions from the consortium and discussions in the Steering Committee, the consortium speakers invited the representatives to join the ABs. They first assembled at the Consortium Meeting 2.0 and shared their first impressions of the initiative’s efforts so far. The ABs will continue to meet once a year alongside the full consortium meeting. Their evaluation of the project’s progress will ensure that the consortium is on track and develops and delivers services which align with the mission of the NFDI in general and which address the needs of the chemistry community.

For more information and for a full list of members of our Advisory Boards take a look here.

A New Look for NFDI4Chem

NFDI4Chem launched its new logo in the last quarter of 2021. The simple, clear, and recognisable graphic was designed to align with the key concepts of research data management in chemistry.

On November 10, a little over one year after the consortium’s kickoff, NFDI4Chem launched its new corporate identity. The original logo, composed of a flurry of hexagonal shapes tinged in light shades of blue, was well-liked by the majority of the consortium members. However, due to its complexity and level of detail, it proved impractical for many digital applications. Therefore, NFDI4Chem commissioned the design of a new logo and corporate identity early in 2021. After gathering several offers, timespin, a company based in Jena, won the contract.

Timespin’s carefully thought-out design manages to visually capture the mission of the initiative, namely to build an open and FAIR infrastructure for research data management in chemistry. The integration of several components, all inspired by the FAIR principles (see image below), resulted in a simple, clear, and recognisable graphic that aligns well with the key concepts of research data management in chemistry. The new logo resumes the hexagonal shape from the original logo and picks up blue as the main color, but uses a bolder and more modern shade. In the style of chemical formulas, NFDI4Chem is written with a subscript “4” in the logo, which optionally carries the claim “enhance your data”. A set of colours, recommended font, and templates for prevalent applications complete the tools towards a coherent, visual identity of NFDI4Chem.

Colours and logo have also been replaced on the NFDI4Chem website. However, this is only a temporary fix. With the input from the NFDI4Chem Steering Committee, timespin is currently working towards a complete overhaul of the NFDI4Chem website. So, watch this space!

FAIR-inspired components who make up the new NFDI4Chem logo

Short Report on the 2nd Consortium Meeting

NFDI4Chem held its second consortium meeting on the 14th and 15th of October 2021. The members of the consortium were joined by representatives from all four Advisory Boards. A full programme highlighted the progress of the consortium after the first year of work as well as the challenges ahead.

October 2021 marked the first anniversary of NFDI and all NFDI consortia of the first selection round, including NFDI4Chem, of course. To look back on what was achieved in the first year of work and to cast an eye on the challenges ahead towards building a national research data infrastructure in chemistry, the partners in NFDI4Chem gathered on October 14 and 15 for their second consortium meeting. Again, owing to the ongoing pandemic, plans to meet in person were abandoned at short notice and the event went virtual once more.

For the first time, the consortium members were joined by a nearly full representation of the NFDI4Chem Advisory Boards (ABs). Given the early stage of the project, the members of the ABs took a mostly observing position and did not provide a formal evaluation. Nonetheless, they participated actively in the discussions and critically challenged the consortium members on the presentation of achievements and future plans. Reassuringly, the consortium was met with a lot of praise for its efforts and received strong encouragement to continue on its current path.

Early in the planning of Consortium Meeting 2.0, the Steering Committee had decided to engage colleagues who build the individual components of the infrastructure on a day-to-day basis. To this end, a series of flash talks, each approximately five minutes long, accompanied the respective reports from the five technical task areas. As there were more talks than slots available on day one, an additional, dedicated flash talk session took place on the second day of the meeting. Topics included data repositories, universal molecular identifier, ontologies, guidelines for standards or copyright issues, to name but a few.

The programme of the meeting was rounded off with a session on news from the NFDI family, progress reports on all four sections of the NFDI e.V., a discussion of administrative aspects of the consortium, an introduction of the project management tool Open Project, and two rounds of general discussion at the end of both days.

Last but not least, the Consortium Meeting helped raise the number of @nfdi4chem followers on Twitter over the 500 mark.

NFDI4Chem, Consortium “Gemäß Satzung”

NFDI4Chem has been created as a consortium within the NFDI e.V. and has confirmed its spokespersons at its first general meeting.

The “Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur eingetragener Verein” (NFDI e.V.; e.V. is a type of German legal entity) was founded on 12 October 2020. It gives the NFDI the legal framework it needs to operate independently. Founding members of the “Verein” are the German Federation and all its 16 states. Every organisation that is part of a funded NFDI consortium or any legal entity that is expected to make a substantial contribution to realise the cause of the NFDI e.V. can apply to become a member (Kurzinfo NFDI e.V).

The way the NFDI Verein operates is laid out in its “Satzung” (constitution), which you can find here: NFDI Satzung. To capture the landscape of the funded NFDI consortia (consortia “gemäß BLV”), mirror images of all funded consortia are created within the NFDI e.V. as the so-called consortia “gemäß Satzung”. The composition of these consortia is supposed to reflect the funded ones, but it does not have to be identical. Importantly, only organisations that have joined the NFDI e.V. as members can be represented within them.

NFDI4Chem “gemäß Satzung” was one of the first consortia to be created in the NFDI e.V. All but three partners of the consortium “gemäß BLV” have joined the NFDI e.V. at the time of writing this article. Due to legal reasons, the spokespersons for the consortium “gemäß Satzung” had to be independently elected. This election took place on 25 June 2021 in a virtual meeting via Zoom. Christoph Steinbeck and Oliver Koepler stood for the position of spokesperson and deputy spokesperson, respectively. The election was uncontested. They were unanimously elected for the role (one eligible partner did not attend the meeting, accounting for one abstention).

The NFDI e.V. is still in its building phase. Slowly but steadily the internal structures are being established and the various organs that are overlooking and advising its work are coming together. For example, in the coming months the first general meeting of all members will take place. Their first task is to elect the three scientific members of the “Kuratorium” (board of trustees), which were nominated by the member organisations.