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National Research Data Infrastructure

Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur NFDI

Data get lost quickly if only saved temporarily and locally. The National Research Data Infrastructure ("Nationale Forschungsdaten Infrastruktur", NFDI) aims to systematically index, edit, interconnect and make available data from German science and research system. A digital knowledge space will enable new research questions, understandings and innovations, across scientific disciplines.  

NFDI aims to:

  • improve access to research data systematically and sustainably;
  • provide data which has been saved only decentralized, project-specific and temporarily so far;
  • build an overall structure of interconnected consortiums;
  • connect providers and users;
  • develop standards for an interoperable research data management;
  • build a common base for data protection, sovereignty, integrity and quality of data;
  • build research data services and
  • secure international connectivity.

Methodically and professionally organized consortiums are supposed to act as a national research data service: Connections of universities, research institutes, academies and information infrastructure institutes. Within the subsidized consortia, researchers develop innovative solutions for their science communities. The consortia connect existing data collections but also provide new, overarching services for research data management. Since May 2021, the museum has been a member of the registered association Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur e.V. based in Karlsruhe.

Here  you can find the homepage of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI).

Here  you can find the Twitter account of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), @NFDI_de, hashtags: #NFDI, #FAIRData, #OpenData, #OpenScience, #OpenSource.

Being a leading, globally connected research organization with multidisciplinary research alignment, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is a partner institution in three of the NFDI consortia already funded: NFDI4Biodiversity, NFDI4Culture and NFDI4Earth. The connectivity to international initiatives and developments is ensured through the museum’s active participation in the development of the European research infrastructure DiSSCo, the international DINA  consortium but also its active contribution to the international body Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG). Furthermore, the Museum is involved in building the consortium NFDI4Objects, currently under review. So far, the museum is the only research museum of the Leibniz Association contributing to multiple NFDI consortia and to international political networking (see NFDI4Biodiversity proposal).

NFDI4Biodiversity

The NFDI4Biodiversity consortium is dedicated to deliver tools for researchers and improve the availability of data related to biodiversity, ecology and environmental science.
Biodiversity includes the genetic, phenotypical, functional diversity of species, organisms, populations and ecosystems. NFDI4Biodiversity supports the research of biodiversity loss and its consequences by making its data accessible and integrating it using the FAIR  data principles.

The consortium is led by the MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences ("Zentrum für Marine Umweltwissenschaften") Bremen. Further co-applicants include universities, infrastructure institutions, research centers and societies. The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is one of the participating institutions.

The role of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is significant to the consortium: it manages one of the most important natural history collections and already acts as a data center framed by the German Federation of Biological Data (GFBio) for publishing and archiving biodiversity data  The museum contributes expertise in the field of data curation and technical services.

The NFDI4Biodiversity consortium aims at:

  • Promoting data management as an integral part of biodiversity research
  • Enabling FAIRness of data
  • Consolidating FAIRness with quality
  • Embedding NFDI4BioDiversity into the (inter-)national landscape
  • Addressing NFDI-wide cross-cutting topics
  • Promoting collaborative governance, viability and sustainability of data infrastructure services and science.

Here  you can find the homepage of NFDI4Biodiversity.

Here  you can find the Twitter account of NFDI4Biodiversity, @NFDI4BioDiv, hashtags: #NFDI, #Biodiversity.

NFDI4Culture

The consortium NFDI4Culture is dedicated to research data of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Those data play an essential role in daily life, in communication, and in cultural actions and experiences. Furthermore, the tangible and intangible cultural heritage has a lasting influence on the perception of cultural identity and on the interactions between research, cultural economy and society. The long-term preservation and reliable availability of digital cultural assets in line with the FAIR  and CARE  principles are fundamentally important for the cultural self-understanding of individuals, groups and society as a whole.

The geographically, thematically and institutionally balanced consortium aims to represent the broad spectrum of different actors in the cultural heritage domain in Germany the best way possible. The co-applicants comprise universities, infrastructure institutions, Germany’s largest institution in the GLAM  sector (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz) and the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz. This group is completed by eleven academic societies each representing one of the research domains that together make up the community of interest. The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is one of these partner institutions.

Natural history collections are per se part of the cultural heritage – data from cultural and natural history disciplines are firmly interlinked. The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is an innovative center of communication and research for NFDI. Its zoological, paleontological, geological, and mineralogical collections are of high scientific and historical importance. The museum is committed to exploring its collection as cultural heritage and to facilitating dialogue with society. Its extensive expertise contributes to apply FAIR data standards on non-textual tangible and intangible cultural assets.

The Museum is one of the leading institutions regarding the development of domain specific (meta-)data standards for collections (ABCD  standard, EFG  standard), but the technology used is even capable to serve data standards that are relevant for the historico-cultural data (e.g. LIDO). As an interface, the museum observes developments, gives crucial impulses and supports the dialogue and information exchange across domains with its expertise and its technological pioneering role.

Here  you can find the homepage of NFDI4Culture.

Here  you can find the Twitter account of NFDI4Culture, @nfdi4culture, hashtags: #NFDI, #Culture.

NFDI4Objects

NFDI4Objects is a multidisciplinary consortium aimed at researchers and practitioners working with the physical heritage of three million years of human and environmental history. The Museum für Naturkunde works as a partner within the consortium on the standardization and interoperability of collection data. Together with the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz and other partners, the MfN developed the pilot project on the interoperability of data on archaeological and natural history objects (TRAILs - Task-Related Activities for Implementation and Launch of Services). This project focuses on the provenance of complex objects from archaeological and natural history collections. The aim is to develop a conceptual model that implements the semantic interoperability of collection data on the basis of interdisciplinary use cases and takes existing, domain-specific data models into account.

Here you can find the homepage of NFDI4Objects.

Here you can find the Twitter account of NFDI4Objects, @nfdi4objects, hashtags: #NFDI, #FDM, #RDM, #NFDI4objects.

Links:

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)

Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft (DFG)

Gemeinsame Wissenschaftskonferenz (GWK) Bonn

Rat für Informationsstrukturen (RFII)

European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)

Forschungsdaten-Wiki