German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI)

In order to establish and promote a national network, the German federal and state governments founded the non-profit association Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI) e.V., based in Karlsruhe, in October 2020. In three funding phases, a total of 26 consortia from different scientific disciplines and a basic service as a network of all consortia were selected to support the association.

They will work together in the subject-specific consortia and in the interdisciplinary sections to make research data available according to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). The necessary structures will be established step by step in a bottom-up and science-driven process until 2028 by establishing data standards, modeling science-specific metadata and ontologies, and clarifying fundamental legal and ethical issues.

The University of Bayreuth is an official member of NFDI e.V. since October 2023.

Base4NFDI

In Base4NFDI, all subject-specific consortia are working together to identify and develop cross-consortia basic services and to establish and consolidate service offerings that are needed beyond the boundaries of the individual consortia. Services are currently being developed for Identity & Access Management (IAM4NFDI), for Terminology Services (TS4NFDI) and for Persistent Identifier (PID4NFDI).

• BERD@NFDI

• KonsortSWD

• NFDI4Culture

• NFDI4Memory

• NFDI4Objects

• Text+

• NFDI4DataScience

• NFDI4Energy

• NFDI4Ing

• NFDI-MatWerk

• NFDIxCS

• DataPLANT

• FAIRagro

• NFDI4Immuno

• GHGA

• NFDI4Biodiversity

• NFDI4BIOIMAGE

• NFDI4Health

• NFDI4Microbiota

• DAPHNE4NFDI

• FAIRmat

• NFDI4Cat

• MaRDI

• NFDI4Chem

• NFDI4Earth

• PUNCH4NFDI

• (Co-)Speaker:

  NFDIxCS (Prof. Agnes Koschmider, Chair of Business Informatics and Process Analytics)

• Participant:

  DAPHNE4NFDI

  FAIRmat

  NFDI4Memory

The section Common Infrastructures is responsible for maintaining communication between the various consortia and providing a basis for the development and use of cross-consortia structures within the framework of the basic services. Furthermore, a multi-cloud-based infrastructure is intended to provide an opportunity for the exchange and shared use of resources (section concept).

The section Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects focuses on the ethical, legal and social aspects of research data. Existing knowledge from the communities will be used to develop solutions and guidelines for various issues and, for example, to develop statements on current legislative proposals (section concept).

In order to make research data findable and reusable according to the FAIR principles, it is essential to describe the data using metadata. Therefore, the section for (Meta)data, Terminologies, Provenance is working across consortia on the development and establishment of uniform data and metadata standards, also with regard to a possible NFDI core metadata format (section concept).

In accordance with the guiding principle "Data literacy from the very beginning" the section Training & Education aims to integrate the basics of the appropriate handling of research data into existing educational concepts and to establish them at all levels of competence, from bachelor students to professors. Therefore, they will establish a common knowledge base in form of a platform for the development and provision of target group-specific and demand-oriented materials (section concept).

Data is not only generated in science and research, but industry also creates valuable data sets. The Industry Engagement section has therefore set itself the goal of creating the conditions for cooperation and coordination between these actors. To achieve this, they will develop uniform framework conditions for cooperation between the NFDI consortia and industry and establish a common platform for exchange (section concept).