Propose to us!

IAM4NFDI Enters Ramp-Up Phase to Deliver a Sustainable, Federated Identity Service for Germany’s Research Infrastructure

IAM Success Story

2026-02-23

The cornerstone of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) - IAM4NFDI - has officially launched its Ramp-Up Phase (2026–2028), marking a pivotal step toward transforming into a fully operational, sustainable, and scalable authentication and authorisation infrastructure, the NFDI-AAI, for the NFDI community.

As of today, the operational NFDI-AAI services in production are already used by thousands of scientists on a daily basis as part of many NFDI operational services. Yet, there is room and need for improvement, says the service team in their ramp-up proposal.

Since its inception, IAM4NFDI has successfully integrated 22 out of 26 NFDI consortia, one Base4NFDI basic service and 4 general projects outside of NFDI into its Community AAI (CAAI) ecosystem, enabling seamless, secure, and federated access to digital resources across disciplines. The project’s infrastructure is based on standardisations set in the AARC Blueprint Architecture, demonstrating strong interoperability with international infrastructures like the EOSC AAI Federation.

Key Focus Areas in the Ramp-Up Phase:
Operation and technical evolution: Preparing for upcoming European developments such as the EOSC AAI Federation and the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI), simplifying and improving operational processes, and strengthening the infrastructure so the service remains stable, secure, and reliably available across different locations as requirements continue to evolve.
Technical Integration and Interoperability: Enabling the NFDI-AAI to participate in the EOSC AAI Federation as an integral part of the German National Node.
User Experience and User Engagement: Streamlining login flows, enhancing overall user experience, and strengthening user engagement within NFDI.
Policy: Operationalising the GDPR-compliant Policy Framework to be maintained and further developed beyond the project’s funding period.
Incubators: While service connections remain as part of routine operations, new incubator projects focus on supporting and deepening complex service integrations, such as support for Virtual Organisations in GitLab, identity linking, and “second-factor as-a-service”.
Security and Support: Integration into an NFDI-wide helpdesk/support infrastructure and NFDI-wide security and incident response framework.
Sustainability and Strategy: Integrating a federated accounting layer together with the Basic Service Accounting4NFDI and exploring a non-commercial “NFDI-AAI-as-a-Service” while aligning with the NFDI Association’s long-term strategy. Most importantly, establishing long-term durable governance and funding models to ensure the service’s future beyond the current funding cycle.

IAM4NFDI Success Story

IAM Success Story

2026-02-12

We're proud to announce that the basic service IAM4NFDI has made it to the list of NFDI Success Stories and Use Cases! Congratulations!

Under the title "Less Login, More Research" NFDI explained how IAM4NFDI made access to the research data management platform Coscine easier, more secure, and better connected across the NFDI landscape during two successful incubator project cycles. Users can now sign in using the IAM4NFDI Community AAI of NFDI4ING using familiar accounts such as their institutional login or ORCID and conveniently link these accounts in one place. This removes the need for manual account setup and makes working with Coscine thus faster and more user-friendly. IAM4NFDI also enables participating organisations securely share sensitive information about user roles and permissions so that Coscine users automatically receive their associated access rights without having to deal with technical details. 

Overall, the incubator projects show how IAM4NFDI supports seamless access to research services across the NFDI and helps create a consistent, trustworthy login experience for the research community. Find out how which services/projects were connected to IAM4NFDI on their incubator dashboard. Reach out to the IAM4NFDI team via email if you want to participate: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

10th Base4NFDI Newsletter - February 2026

Newsletter Feb

2026-02-03

Welcome to the 10th 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

Brief updates from the basic services

  • IAM4NFDI
    • IAM4NFDI has published their proposal for the Ramp-up phase on Zenodo. The final phase for development will start in February 2026
    • The fourth cycle will end with the start of the new incubator cycle. Six incubators were completed: Data Ingest Service; AAI service integration into LARA; Opening the Cloud-based Workflow Manager (CloWM) to the whole NFDI; Come2Data – Competence Center for Interdisciplinary Data Science; Opening up the SimpleVM Bielefeld University Installation for external collaborations.
    • NFDI4CAT RepositoryIncubator cycle 5 will start in February 2026. Four new incubators were accepted: NFDI AII for the NFDI4ING Jupyter Service; Single-Sign-On for TS4NFDI services; Come2Data – Competence Center for Interdisciplinary Data Science (follow-up incubator); AgiMo: Data-driven agile planning for responsible mobility.
    • For more information about the IAM4NFDI incubators, take a look at the incubator dashboard.
  • TS4NFDI
    • The team is hosting the 2nd TS4NFDI Community Hands-On Workshop in Leipzig from 10 - 12 March 2026. In the workshop we will cover the following topics: 1) Terminology curation workflows, 2) Mapping (service) requirements and 3) Collections and entity sets for terminologies. Register here.
  • PID4NFDI
    • PID4NFDI has published a Blueprint architecture for PID provider service integrations in a PID-based knowledge graph and a Recommendation to NFDI: Identifying NFDI Consortia with Persistent Identifiers. Here you can also find the slides published from the PID Panel at CoRDI 2025 (in collaboration with KGI4NFDI).
    • Join the next PID4NFDI Open Hour on 12 Feb. at 13:00 CET to celebrate Love Data Week. Jana Böhm and Frederik Springer will introduce the comprehensive Instrument Knowledge Base on the PID4NFDI website. Don’t miss it and mark it on your calendar! 
    • The team has published the PID Selection Tool online. The tool helps infrastructure and repository managers to explore which persistent identifier systems best fit their needs. It also helps users to understand the differences between four object-related persistent identifiers: DataCite DOIs, ePIC Handles provided by GWDG, ARKs, and URNs.
  • KGI4NFDI
    • KGI4NFDI submitted a proposal for the Integration phase on 28 January.
  • DMP4NFDI
    • Upcoming events:
      • Love Data Week – Talk: How to Make Your DMP Template Interoperable in RDMO. When: Feb. 10 2026, 11:00-12:00 (CET). Register here
      • .Base4NFDI Demo Session: Guide to build a DMP/SMP service in your consortium. When: Feb. 10 2026, 13:30-14:30 (CET). Register here.
      • RDA Deutschland Tagung 2026. When: Feb. 24-25 2026 in Potsdam. Come check their poster and meet the team!
    • Check their new incubator dashboard! New incubator projects started in January and will run until June:
      • Outreach: FAIRagro, Text+
      • Template Development: NFDI4Cat, MaRDI, NFDI4Health
      • SMP: DataPlant
      • RDMO Hosting: NFDI4Earth, FAIRmat
      • Service Integration: Coscine
  • Jupyter4NFDI
    • The Integration phase started in October 2025. Base4NFDI conducted a successful online kick-off workshop on 9 December to delve into processes of the Integration phase. 
    • As part of the incubator process, Jupyter4NFDI have received six requests. The deadline was on 30 January. Pitch talks and subsequent selection of projects will take place on 4 February. Incubator projects can cover several areas from on-boarding user communities to integrating further resources or specific content.
    • The project will participate in the Love Data Week 2026 with a workshop on Friday, February 13th from 13:00-15:00 CET (no registration).
    • The workshop feature of Jupyter4NFDI has been updated to provide all functionality conveniently in the web interface. Before this change, general configuration and user management had to be done in separate places. Furthermore, shared storage for workshops has been added as requested by workshop instructors.
  • nfdi.software
    • The Initialisation phase of nfdi.software was finished on 31 December 2025. Currently the team is working on finishing and polishing their project deliverables. A resubmission of the Integration phase is still planned.tension of their Initialisation phase until 31.12.2025.
  • RDMTraining4NFDI
    • RDMT4NFDI submitted a proposal for the Integration phase on January 28.
  • Accounting4NFDI
    • Accounting4NFDI starts its work in February officially. A Kick-Off Meeting with the Base4NFDI team is planned on February 12.

Publications and related materials

  • Base4NFDI-Toolkit for Requirements Analysis Strategy, 4.12.2025. Zenodo.

Miscellaneous

  • There will be a new showcase format from Base4NFDI (Demo Sessions) to give a hands-on look at our basic services, see workflows in action, and chat directly with the developers. For more information  have a look on our event page.
  • The 10th submission round was closed and Base4NFI received 3 proposals for basic services: Support4RDM for Initialisation phase, KGI4NFDI and RDMTraining4NFDI for Integration phase.
  • The accompanying research on Base4NFDI is about to enter its next phase, which will include qualitative interviews with data providers. The study examines how providers use and implement basic services and analyzes the epistemic role of data providers in the German science system. The survey is part of the accompanying research for Base4NFDI which is conducted by the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW). Contact: Alexander Schniedermann (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

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

Base4NFDI publishes Ramp-Up Phase proposal template (v1.1)

Base4NFDI new4x

2026-01-20

We are pleased to announce the publication of version 1.1 of the Base4NFDI proposal template for the Ramp-Up Phase. This marks an important milestone in the development of Base4NFDI basic services.

The Ramp-Up Phase focuses on preparing services for sustainable, scalable operation. Key aspects include service scalability, long-term governance, the development of an operating and business model, and further integration into the NFDI service portfolio.

The template is based on the Ramp-Up Phase framework document available on Zenodo which is referenced throughout the proposal template and provides essential background.

The framework document describes the Ramp-Up procedures, the respective responsibilities of service teams and Base4NFDI, and the associated decision-making workflows. The Ramp-Up Phase is dedicated to ensuring that services complete all necessary steps to be rolled out for widespread use in a sustainable and scalable manner. By the end of the phase, services are expected to have a clear business and operating model, compliance with relevant legal requirements (in particular GDPR), appropriate security and backup measures, and advanced interoperability, including readiness for federation within EOSC if applicable.

The template is now available on the Base4NFDI website.

Base4NFDI Highlights 2025

Xmas Card 25

2025-12-18

Dear community,
2025 was an exciting year for Base4NFDI and we would like to share some of our project highlights with you. We call this little recap “Base in Numbers” – sit back and enjoy the little read…

  • We had our 2nd Base4NFDI User Conference (UC4B) in Aachen, as a joint event together with this year’s CoRDI.
  • Our 3rd Explainer Video is out! Follow this link to check out the Explainer Video for TS4NFDI.
  • 3 incubator calls are currently open, for IAM4NFDI, TS4NFDI, Jupyter4NFDI. You can find out more in our News Archive.
  • This year, we published 6 newsletter issues.
  • Currently, a total of 9 Basic Services are onboarded in two different phases.
  • At CoRDI 2025, we were represented with 13 submissions.
  • We visited 18 conferences, both national and international (and of course many other meetings!).
  • 22 consortia welcomed us to their annual events.
  • We are currently a team of 27 amazing people!

Additionally, we would like to thank everyone who took part in our evaluation, our Roadshow, and generally, for contributing so greatly to our efforts. You are the heart of our work and motivation – so let’s keep on thriving together in 2026!

And if you want to get more information on each “Base in Numbers”, check out our LinkedIn profile (and follow us!).