2026-04-21

Base4NFDI is delighted to announce that RDMTraining4NFDI and KGI4NFDI have been accepted for funding for the Integration phase following the Consortia Assembly’s decision! 

Congratulations to the Basic Service teams! 

RDMTraining4NFDI is concerned with offering training in the knowledge and skills required for research data management (RDM) to all NFDI consortia. The training encompasses data, software, and machine-learning models, and is intended for the consortia’s staff, such as data stewards and trainers, as well as researchers within the respective communities. The core goal of this service is to develop a modular collection of foundational RDM training materials, along with documented, proven training formats and methods. By providing access to these resources, consortia can efficiently create their own community-specific adaptations of the training and build capacity rapidly. Additionally, the option of certification will be explored to establish quality standards and document the skills acquired by participants.

KGI4NFDI advocates for a central and reusable Knowledge Graph Infrastructure (KGI) to enhance interoperability within the research domain and support the NFDI's objectives. It aims to provide essential components including a Knowledge Graph (KG) registry and a service for accessing KGs across NFDI projects. Additionally, the service intends to empower research communities to create decentralised KG instances using standardised approaches, technologies, and expertise. Through surveys, documentation, consulting services, and ontology harmonisation, the proposal seeks to optimise KG creation and foster standardised ontological practices, contributing to the "One NFDI" vision and promoting FAIR data principles. This initiative will complement international efforts, such as those of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), in advancing knowledge graph initiatives.

Base4NFDI is looking forward to supporting the services and encourages the NFDI community to join this endeavour by actively participating in the NFDI sections!

2026-04-13

Welcome to the 11th Base4NFDI newsletter!
Every two months we will share the latest updates about upcoming Base-relevant events and presentations, insights into the basic service development, and notify you about interesting resources to keep you informed and inspired. 
Thank you for your support this year and being part of our community. Wishing you a restful end of the year and a great start to the new one.

 Meet us

• Demo Session: RDMT4NFDI, Apr. 14, 2026, 1:30-2:30 pm, online
• Fireside Chats, Apr. 28, 2026 14-14:45 CEST, online via Zoom
• HMC Conference 2026 – Metadata in Action, Apr. 28-30, 2026, Heidelberg
• FOR 2026 Conference, May 4-6, 2026, Munich
• NFDI4Chem Consortium Meeting 7.0, May 12-13, 2026, Jena
• NFDITalk: Intro to PID4NFDI service components, May 18, 2026, 4-5pm, online
• 5th NFDI4Earth Plenary, May 27-29, 2026, Dresden

Brief updates from the basic services

• IAM4NFDI
  • First Success Story of IAM4NFDI is published on NFDI website.
  • Base4NFDI conducted a successful online kick-off workshop with the team on March 6 to delve into processes of the Ramp-up phase.
  • The service is about to start with a new incubator cycle with 4 new projects.

• TS4NFDI
  • The team will submit their proposal for the next development phase (ramp-up) on April 22. The new phase would then start in spring 2027.

• PID4NFDI
  • The team will submit their proposal for the next development phase (ramp-up) on April 22.
  • Call for Participants: PID4NFDI has currently two user studies running until the end of April. If you would like to support the team with enhancing their PID selection tool and their PIDINST federated search for instrument PIDs, they are happy to hear from you! Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more information.
  • New publication: Edmunds, R., Springer, F., & Böhm, J. (2025). Metadata Examples for Instrument PIDs: Guidance Document (1.0). Zenodo.
  • PID4NFDI invites the community to share feedback on the DataCite linked-data schema namespace. The work introduces stable, resolvable IRIs for DataCite schema elements and controlled vocabularies, aiming to make metadata more consistent and easier to work with in practice. If you have thoughts, questions, or ideas, we’d really like to hear them. You can leave feedback on GitHub, or reach out if you’d prefer a conversation GitHub repository.
  • Join the online workshop, PID4NFDI Community workshop on IGSN Use Cases on June 4, 2026, from 10:00 to 13:00 CEST. They will bring together experts and beginners to share hands-on experiences with the International Generic Sample Number (IGSN) and discuss its implementation across the NFDI landscape. Program and Link to register.

• KGI4NFDI
  • The team particpated in the Website Accessibility Workshop and first steps to check compliance of KGI4NFDI’s web services.

• DMP4NFDI
  • The recording of the Demo Session with DMP4NFDI from February 10 is now online on Youtube.
  • 2nd Call for Incubator Projects is now open (Deadline for applications April 22). More information and application form here.
  • Recent and upcoming events can be found on the new events page.
  • The DMP team had another successful Train-the-Trainer workshop at the FDM-Werkstatt in Düsseldorf, helping them to revise and enhance their training material.
  • New publication: Schönau, S, Cafiero, M., Kröckert, K. W., Meißner, D., Langer, R., Gauding, M. & Pitsch, H. (2026). Parent Projects in RDMO: How Hierarchies in the Research Data Management Organiser Facilitate Data Management in Large-Scale Projects. International Journal of Digital Curation, 20(1). Doi.

• Jupyter4NFDI
  • A new Automated Notebook Validation feature has been added involving GitHub Actions.
  • The service has participated in the Love Data Week 2026 with a workshop involving Jupyter4NFDI on February 13, 2026.
  • Received requests for 8 incubator projects to accommodate use cases from various scientific domains in Jupyter4NFDI. The applicants pitched their ideas in a meeting on February 4 and have all been accepted.

• RDMTraining4NFDI
  • RDMT4NFDI has launched their new RDMT4NFDI website.
  • RDMT4NFDI published the Proposal for the Integration Phase, the Report on the Stakeholder Exchange, the Report on the Stakeholder Meeting in November 2025, the Evaluation Report Hybrid Training Event and a [Documentation of the RDMTraining4NFDI Template – Collection for Training Materials]( https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19132287).
  • RDMT4NFDI also published a new version of the RDMTraining4NFDI Template – Collection of RDM training materials .
  • Reminder: Insights from NFDI training format analysis, findings from NFDI training material analysis and Q&A will be presented at the Demo Session RDMT4NFDI on Apr. 14, 2026, 1:30-2:30 pm.
  • The Initialisation phase of RDMT4NFDI’s will be finished on 30 April 2026. A final report of RDMT4NFDIs findings during the Initialisation Phase will be presented at the meeting of the section EduTrain.
  • RDMT4NFDI would like to thank the entire RDM community for the tremendously treasured support during the past 12 months.

• Accounting4NFDI
  • Base4NFDI conducted a successful online kick-off workshop with the team on February 12 to delve into processes of the Initialisation phase.

Publications and related materials

• Service Design Guide, V1.1, February 9, 2026, Zenodo
• Base4NFDI Evaluation and Recommendations: Summary of Base4NFDI Response to recent Recommendations as part of External Evaluation by the Technopolis Group, February 13, 2026, Zenodo

Miscellaneous

• The deadline for the next proposal submission (Round 11) is due April 22, 2026. More information about the submission process here.
• Base4NFDi is celebrating its third birthday. To mark the occasion, we are launching a small campaign on LinkedIn in March, which will showcase the project's successes and basic services every month for a year.
• Join our fireside chat series featuring seasoned leaders from research data infrastructures (RDI) as they share hard‑won insights on building, running, and sustaining reliable data ecosystems. Each session will uncover practical lessons for long-term sustainability governance, federated services, community buy-in, and long‑term sustainability – designed to inspire the current and future RDI leaders. The series is co-organised by the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) which builds the essential bridges to the global community on RDM challenges and infrastructures. The first interview will be on 28 April 2026 at 14h CEST (12h UTC +2) with Michael Schull, CEO of the Canadian Data Alliance.

Collaborations

• DMP4NFDI and PID4NFDI will be part of the next incubator cycle of TS4NFDI. The first project aims to integrate the TSS widgets into RDMO, the latter will integrate DataCite metadata properties and TSS widgets into RSpace core ELN workflows to enhance interoperability and enable early metadata enrichment. More information here.

If you have any questions, please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.1

2026-04-02

Fireside Chat Interview Series 2026

Conversations on Sustainable Research Data Management

Join our fireside chat series featuring seasoned leaders from research data infrastructures (RDI) as they share hard‑won insights on building, running, and sustaining reliable data ecosystems. Each session will uncover practical lessons for long-term sustainability governance, federated services, community buy-in, and long‑term sustainability – designed to inspire the current and future RDI leaders.

Base4NFDI is a key part of Germany’s efforts to develop sustainable RDM services and has several activity lines exploring how to provide long-term perspective to its own cross-discipline open science services (infrastructures). The series is co-organised by the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) which builds the essential bridges to the global community on RDM challenges and infrastructures.

The 45-minute interviews, held by Najla Rettberg, Coordinator of Base4NFDI, will engage with timely topics, for example:

• Sustainability: Transitioning from project to permanent operating models
• Community Buy-In: Enhancing user engagement and uptake
• Governance: Finding the right fit when it comes to business models and financing approaches
• Long-Term Impact & Scalability: The role of digital sovereignty and AI

All sessions are open to those who register, they will be recorded, with a comprehensive report of key lessons and summaries to be published afterward.

Dates of the Fireside Interviews: 

• 28 April 2026 at 14h CEST (12h UTC +2)
• 18 June 2026 at 10h CEST (8h UTC +2)

Register here: https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uROpjU9FQ_KGM2Wt2Vu2bA#/registration

Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of a global dialogue shaping the future of research data management. Register now and join the conversation!

Our first conversation on 28 April at 14h CEST (12h UTC +2) will be with Michael Schull, M.D., the CEO of the Canadian Data Alliance.

Photo Credit: Digital Research Alliance of Canada

About Michael: 

As CEO of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, Michael leverages his extensive experience in building national and international research and data partnerships, and organizational growth and sustainability to support the establishment of a researcher focused, accountable, agile, strategic and sustainable digital research infrastructure (DRI) ecosystem in Canada.

About the Digital Research Alliance Canada: https://www.alliancecan.ca/en/about 

Rosie Hicks, CEO of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), will share her insights in a second fireside chat on 18 June 2026 at 10h CEST (8h UTC +2). 

Photo Credit: Australian Research Data Commons

About Rosie: 

Rosie Hicks is the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). The ARDC is a sector-wide initiative enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) to provide Australian researchers with competitive advantage through data. The ARDC’s mission is to accelerate research and innovation by driving excellence in the creation, analysis and retention of high-quality data assets. Rosie has expertise and extensive knowledge of the Australian research infrastructure sector, and leadership experience including as the inaugural CEO of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF). Her career, spanning Japan, UK and Australia, includes every aspect of scientific instrumentation from product development and technical marketing to the management of multi-user facilities, working in environments that cross academic and industry domains.

About ARDC: https://ardc.edu.au/