2025-03-19
It’s the beginning of spring, so the perfect date to announce our 2nd – or as we also call it: Spring – Base4NFDI Services Roadshow!
What is the event about?
Differing from our last Roadshow in December (you can watch the videos here), we are inviting you to two events this time. The services presented on May 22 are of particular interest for infrastructure providers and developers, while the talks prepared for May 27 are primarily aimed at researchers and users.
We are, however, happy to welcome you to both events!
Generally, it will be a great opportunity for all currently funded Base4NFDI basic services under development to present themselves.
What can you expect?
The focus points will differ depending on the phase the service teams are currently in with their basic services and the target group of the respective day. The following topics can be expected:
- how to access the service
- who can use the service
- technical implementation
- obstacles to overcome
- live demos
- pitches of new services
Q&A
Ask questions to the teams live or in the chat throughout the event. The Q&A will be uploaded on this web page after the event.
Recording and slides
We will record the presentations and upload them (TBA) after the event. Both the slides and video links will be uploaded on this
web page after the event.
Event schedule
Further details are shown on this web page.
Register here:
https://uni-bielefeld.zoom.us/meeting/register/9a7KW12XRc2a0SqG6euz3w#/registration
2025-03-18
We are excited to share the latest updates to our proposal templates for the Initialisation Phase (v3.3) and Integration Phase (v2.2), featuring general clarifications and enhanced guidance. Key enhancements include updated references to funding top-ups, clearer structuring of required deliverables and more detailed expectations for work packages, ensuring better alignment with integration, quality, and sustainability requirements.
We sincerely thank the basic service teams, NFDI consortia, and our community for their valuable input, which continues to shape these improvements. Your feedback is always welcome at
2025-03-17
Base4NFDI turns two years old this month! Our joint initiative of all 26 NFDI consortia is well beyond taking its first steps, and runs confidently ahead. Below a few reflections on what our team has achieved in a relatively short space of time:
Supporting the services: A significant achievement is the onboarding of 8 potential services
, driven by the NFDI community and facilitated via the Base4NFDI transparent decision-making process. They facilitate open science and RDM across disciplines, as per our mission statement. The
Base4NFDI website
itself now has a wealth of topical information, guidance and templates and the Base4NFDI team supports the services to move through the initialisation, integration and ramp-up for operation phases via a series of
identified activities. Each service is also offered support for training and ‘persona development’, driving a fuller understanding of who uses the service. The services are supported with their daily work by a new role in open science:
service stewards who ultimately provide the vital “glue” for NFDI engagement.
Outreach in Base4NFDI has been an important focus of the team’s activities. The first
user conference held in November 2024 brought the NFDI community together to engage potential users and to embed the services within the activities of the consortia.
Clearly targeted explainer videos have been created and we initiated a regular Services Roadshow. We have also been able to grow our network on LinkedIn, currently counting more than 630 followers there.
Team spirit: Having a
multi-professional team is the most vital cog in all of the above. Team spirit is essential to making things work and as we grow into our responsibilities we can all be proud that we are supporting open science and growing competencies in infrastructure development. Added to this we feel supported by our
International Advisory Board, monitoring our developments, including our European connectivity.
It takes a village: The old adage rings true: Our emerging framework is nurtured not only by Base4NFDI but also the unique NFDI community who are starting to engage with, and commit to adopting the services. This will be the critical next steps to ensure the healthy growth, adoption and ultimately long-term sustainability of these building blocks for open science. Looking to a successful community-driven future ahead!
2025-02-17
Base4NFDI – together with training professionals from NFDI4Chem and HeFDI – has published a guide on effective webinars, targeted towards content and technical experts.
Access
it under "Guides" or on Zenodo: "https://zenodo.org/records/14792536"
You are providing a service and want to explain it in a webinar – but you are a busy expert and have limited experience with virtual sessions? We got you covered. The guide “23 TrainingThings for effective webinars” compiles the best practices of four seasoned webinar and training practitioners in just one page – from finding the right objectives, to structuring your presentation, engaging your audience and following up. And if you want to uncover even more best practices, there is a long version available as well.
Get in touch for any feedback!
2025-02-04
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.
Access
it under "Newsletter Archive" and directly here: "Newsletter February 2025"
2025-01-31
Base4NFDI has published a White Paper on "Advancing Essential Services to Complement EOSC"
Access
it under "EOSC" and here on Zenodo: "Advancing Essential Services to Complement EOSC"
The short paper is aimed at policymakers for the NFDI (German National Research Data Infrastructure) and EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) and examines the Base4NFDI services in the context of the EOSC EU Node services. It is intended as the start of a dialogue on the Base4NFDI contribution to the federation.
Read about:
Get in touch: We’re happy to have feedback on the paper. Feel free to contact
2025-01-09
We are happy to announce the second explainer video on basic services at Base4NFDI!
Discover how Base4NFDI is building a unified infrastructure to simplify research data management across disciplines, learn about open-source tools designed by and for the scientific community that foster collaboration, and streamline interoperable and reusable research workflows.
Watch this video to learn how you can benefit from Base4NFDI services and how you can get involved!
WATCH THE EXPLAINER VIDEO BELOW:
2024-11-13
Thank you for your interest in joining the first instance of our roadshow! It was great to see so many of you online last week!
-> The recorded videos of the service pitches, the Q&A document, and the slides are now online!
Looking forward to seeing you in one of the future roadshow instances!
Reach out for any questions via
2024-11-25
Base4NFDI is pleased to announce the release of updated proposal templates for both the Initialisation and Integration Phases, now available in ODT format. These updates include clarifications and enhancements to improve clarity and usability.The Initialisation Phase template (version 3.2) includes minor updates, such as new references to guidelines and handouts provided by Base4NFDI.
The Integration Phase template (version 2.1) now requires a statement from proposing basic services outlining the efforts needed from consortia for integration of the service. Additionally, it features expanded references and further details on centrally organised activities by Base4NFDI to support the basic service teams during the integration phase.
We extend our gratitude to the basic service teams, NFDI consortia, and our own team for their valuable feedback, which continues to shape these improvements. Base4NFDI remains committed to enhancing these templates and welcomes further suggestions at
For detailed release notes, including information on prior updates, visit:
Base4NFDI templates page.
2024-11-25
IAM4NFDI quickly explained - Discover how IAM4NFDI is revolutionizing access to digital research resources! By connecting and expanding Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems, this initiative enables researchers across Germany and worldwide to seamlessly access tools, data, and services within the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI).Learn how the decentralized, federated approach ensures secure and easy integration with external platforms like the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), benefiting thousands of institutions and researchers globally.If you are supporting researchers in managing their data - watch this video to learn how IAM4NFDI can benefit you and your researchers!
WATCH THE EXPLAINER VIDEO BELOW:
2024-11-06
Towards the end of the year 2024, it will be a great opportunity for all currently funded Base4NFDI basic services under development to present themselves in 10 min + 5 min discussion open to all - NFDI-wide and everyone who’s interested!
The teams will discuss why we need this service, how we will use it, and the goals for the current development phase.
More information on our website.
E
vent schedule:
14:00/2pm Welcome, Intro by Base4NFDI
14:05 IAM4NFDI
14:20 PID4NFDI
14:35 KGI4NFDI
14:50 TS4NFDI
15:05 ~10 min break
15:15 DMP4NFDI
15:30 Jupyter4NFDI
15:45 nfdi.software
16:00 RDMTraining4NFDI
16:15 Wrap-up/Survey
16:30 End
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Reach out for any questions via
Best regards from Base4NFDI
–
*limited capacity.
2024-11-25
Thank you for participating in-person at Fraunhofer FOKUS Berlin and online in our first User Conference in Berlin 2024! To us, it was an inspirational, engaging, and fruitful one and a half days. It showed us where we stand and what’s ahead of us. While our in-person capacity was limited to 200, we were more than happy to welcome people online as well.
The goal was to showcase currently funded and future basic services, examine how particularly consortia can (technically) integrate the service, and find overlaps to services from the NFDI community.
The interactive programme began with a keynote talk by Lilli Freda and Daniele Bailo (EPOS ERIC) about EPOS. EPOS is an open science, community-driven one-stop shop platform that collects and provides crucial data on natural disasters (e.g. tsunamis, earthquakes) with a standardised schema to facilitate decision-making for policy makers and politicians. Its multidimensional approach serves as an inspiration for our efforts in Base4NFDI (and NFDI as a whole). On the first day, the programme covered aspects of the services in the Initialisation phase (Jupyter4NFDI, DMP4NFDI, KGI4NFDI, nfdi.software). The service teams presented insights on how to connect the services with each other within Base4NFDI and in extend to the NFDI Consortia.
Additionally, the floor was opened to further fields, allowing for approaches that are not realised as a basic service as such (yet). The talks spanned from the Research Commons Approach as a potential opportunity for Base4NFDI to the challenges of setting up a sustainable Research Data Infrastructure to the meaning of archiving for research data (to name but a few).
The presentations and discussions were complemented by a poster session, giving the participants a chance to get insights into even more topics. Furthermore, the informal evening reception enabled further discussions and hence, set the tone for the following day.
The second day began with presentations about those basic services currently in the Integration phase (IAM4NFDI, TS4NFDI, PID4NFDI). The IAM4NFDI team began the session with exciting news, launching their explainer video.
WATCH THE EXPLAINER VIDEO HERE: https://base4nfdi.de/projects/iam4nfdi
Generally, all talks were concerned with questions on how to align with other infrastructures both nationally and at European level.To end the 1st Base4NFDI User Conference on an exciting note, incoming services were presented, primarily focussed on optimising the understanding of RDM, e.g. via teaching and training, a digital data steward, and ontologies.
Besides the talks, the UC4B was an opportunity to get together with the different stakeholders involved in the entire Basic service effort – within NFDI and beyond. Connecting the relevant people and supporting their communication was one of the efforts of this User Conference. We are already looking forward to the 2nd UC4B next year. See you there!
Some key take away's
Two considerations for the Base4NFDI team:
2024-10-18
Base4NFDI has published its first Policy Paper: Base4NFDI Services and EOSC: Guidance for Interoperability.
Access it here on Zenodo: Policy paper on services interoperability within EOSC (Version 1)
Interoperability with EOSC is at the heart of Base4NFDI and this activity paves the way to better identifying how to establish links to EOSC EU Node activities and how to engage the Base4NFDI service teams with interoperability discussions in the months ahead.
The paper introduces activities of the NFDI, the emerging Base4NFDI services, current EOSC developments, and explores ways the German national initiative can find connectivity and complement the ongoing European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) activities. It examines the EOSC Interoperability Framework as a tool to find pathways for potential alignment between Base4NFDI Basic services with EOSC, lists action areas, and gives practical guidance for Base4NFDI services to enable organisational, technical, semantic and legal interoperability. Readership is targeted towards the Base4NFDI service development teams, the NFDI and EOSC communities.
Get in touch: We’re happy to have feedback on the paper - feel free to contact
2024-10-14
Base4NFDI is delighted to announce that the following proposals have been accepted for funding following the Consortia Assembly’s decision!
Congratulations to the basic service teams!
This marks a growth in NFDI’s initiative to build basic services for consortia and demonstrates a step forward in the efforts to create RDM-enabling services from across the German research landscape.
RDMTraining4NFDI aims to create a modular collection of foundational RDM training materials. Access to these materials will enable consortia to efficiently develop their own community-specific adaptation of such training.
PID4NFDI aims to enhance the usability of existing PID systems for the NFDI by supporting improvements in technical and organisational interoperability, boosting metadata quality, and creating awareness through training and outreach programs.
TS4NFDI aims to provide a central access point to all terminologies and a suite of widgets that can be added to existing applications of the users. TS4NFDI supports cross-domain application, harmonisation, and curation of terminologies.
We are looking forward to what's ahead of us and encourage the NFDI community to join this endeavour by actively participating in the NFDI sections!
2024-10-07
Due to the dates set for the Consortium Assembly meetings in 2025, the deadlines for submitting the 2025 basic service proposals have been set, too. The deadlines for rounds 7 to 9 in 2025 are the following:
2024-10-01
How can the NFDI and various data competency and other short term projects work together to create value for the scientific community? A take-away metaphor from the panel of the Status Seminar of Data Competence projects nicely summarised it: NFDI can be described as an ocean liner - realising research data management across disciplines- and its success lies in the support of speed boats - representing data competencies - to support it and make it sail smoothly. There is much activity and investment in Germany in data centres, competence initiatives and scientific infrastructures at many levels.
The Base4NFDI team was present at two relevant events that reflected in their programmes critical activities in Germany for research data management (RDM).
“Data Stewardship goes Germany”: an RDM working group of German Technical Universities invited research data handling personnel to Aachen for the 3rd “Data Stewardship goes Germany” workshop. Over 100 people attended from across the German RDM spectrum and many initiatives, case studies and innovative approaches were presented. Base4NFDI took the opportunity to present a poster and discuss basic services with RDM professionals.
Status Seminar “Data Competences in Science”: a meeting sponsored by the German ministry of education & science (BMBF) to bring together three different strands of funded projects representing data competence centres, data competence projects for young professionals in science, RDM at universities of applied science and DALIA - the knowledge graph project of the Data Literacy Alliance in NFDI Section EduTrain. In workshops, the different projects discussed parallels and synergies, matters of sustainability, communication and target groups (among others). The data competencies centres are now fully underway, on different levels, regional or thematic.
What these events mean for Base4NFDI
- Base4NFDI: There is much interest in ways to open up services to data competence centers: the demand is there and the offering from Base4NFDI services needs to be made clear as well as defining the resources needed to deploy these services.
- The NFDI could be the single entry point for all questions around research data management - a Helpdesk portal could support RDM professionals and researchers find the services and infrastructure they need from the wide landscape of offers from the different projects.
- Connect more with Universities of applied science in order to derive requirements and integrate them further into the NFDI - this would help them to benefit from the basic services and extend the services reach.
- Artificial Intelligence tools are becoming more prevalent in RDM practices, for example large data processing, effective analysis. The community needs to work on how to recommend these tools to researchers and NFDI and the centres should work together here.
- Build and utilise connections between the NFDI, Base4NFDI and the data competence projects when it comes to reaching target groups and creating awareness for available training material - for example provided by basic services.
And finally, all our initiatives are catalysts for excellent research data management and cross disciplinary research with the potential to drive cultural change in science. For the smooth “sailing of the ship” and for all to “come to the buffet” we have to show the Benefit for the wider scientific community. It is essential that we extract all these good outcomes and knowledge and engage and stimulate and inspire researchers. We need to harness all this good work and to move from the Islands to create lighthouses of success stories.
2024-09-24
Base4NFDI is constantly trying to improve its quality. As part of our ongoing quality assurance we have published a tender call for conducting a comprehensive evaluation of BaseNFDIs processes. The goal of the external evaluation is to assess the progress and outcomes of our initiative thus far, as well as to identify areas for improvement, ensuring that the infrastructure continues to effectively support the research community.
The results of the evaluation will serve as a basis for recommendations to improve the processes during the second half of the project, with the aim of enhancing the project's efficiency and success. Therefore the outcomes of the evaluation will be summarised in a final report, which will be published.
We are currently in the tender process to search for an external evaluation agency. The public tender can be viewed here. Please feel free to share it with potential providers.
2024-08-13
Save the date already (!) to our new virtual series coming up on Dec 4, 2024 - the Services Roadshow by Base4NFDI!
Towards the end of the year 2024, it will be a great opportunity for all currently funded basic services under development to present themselves in 10 min + 5 min discussion to all of NFDI and everyone who’s interested!
Currently, we have seven services that will explain e.g., their service, target group, how we'll use it, and (plans for) connectivity to EOSC:
IAM4NFDI
PID4NFDI
TS4NFDI
KGI4NFDI
DMP4NFDI
Jupyter4NFDI
nfdi.software
..to be continued
S
ave the date – Dec 4, 2024, 2pm, online. Zoom link to be announced.
..and if this roadshow proves itself useful, we will install it permanently and consider to run it twice a year.
See you there!
2024-07-12
In June 2024, our Service Steward for PID4NFDI, Jana Tatscheck, visited the PIDfest in Prague at the Czech National Library of Technology (NTK), along with the PID4NFDI team.
PIDfest is a newly established international conference series solely dedicated to persistent identifiers (PIDs), their usage, further development and community networking. This year it was hosted for three days by i.a., NTK and the ARDC (Australian Research Data Commons) and was the first of many PIDfests to come.
As PIDs are a working example of all FAIR principles, they are a vital piece of infrastructure and crucial for its implementation in Research Data Management (RDM) and Open Science. In addition to the persistence, PIDs' rich metadata are yet to be discovered and require more attention and awareness in the future.
The PID4NFDI team presented their project in context of the German national PID strategy pursued by the PID Network Deutschland e.V. and discussed their ideas in multiple unconference sessions. Base4NFDI gladly expanded their knowledge about PIDs and network with other national initiatives beyond the NFDI. Base4NFDI was also happy to support our basic service teams on site and enjoyed the first in-person meeting with the team to discuss the current project and strengthen the team work.
PIDfest, see you next time!
2024-07-11
Base4NFDI is delighted to announce its International Advisory Board (IAB) is now in place. The board reviews the overall status of Base4NFDI and gives recommendations for the development and strategic operation. Internationalisation of the future Base services and interoperability within the Open Science landscape are some of the key objectives of Base4NFD, and the initiative has a dedicated set of activities to define and promote our services and outputs beyond national borders.
The world-renowned experts coming together in the IAB represent research commons and national data infrastructures, and bring a wealth of knowledge around critical issues such as EOSC and international interoperability.
Carole Goble (University of Manchester), Hilary Hanahoe (Research Data Alliance), Rosie Hicks (Australian Research Data Commons), Klaus Tochtermann (Leibniz Information Centre for Economics), and Mark van de Sanden (SURF Data Preservation Services) have kindly agreed to be member of the IAB to provide strategic advice to Base4NFDI on status and development of our project.
The IAB has already initiated important conversations around strategic and technical interoperability, critical international networking, and building effective services. Base4NFDI is proud to have such an impressive group of experts operate as the IAB and we are very much looking forward to their valuable input and our future collaboration!
2024-07-08
Base4NFDI is delighted to announce that the basic service proposal nfdi.software has been accepted for funding of the Initialisation Phase following the Consortia Assembly’s decision!
This marks a growth in the NFDI’s initiative to build basic services for consortia and demonstrates a step forward in the efforts to create RDM-enabling services from across the German research landscape.
nfdi.software aims to design, implement, and test a central marketplace for research software to improve the accessibility of NFDI research data via domain-specific software and enable more complex reuse of metadata and software.
Congratulations to the basic service team!
We are looking forward to what's ahead of us and encourage the NFDI community to join this endeavour by actively participating in the NFDI sections!
2024-06-18
We would like to remind you of the Call for Incubator Projects for the IAM4NFDI Project. There’s still time until June 30th, 2024 to submit your ideas. Please note the information below for further details about the process.
The IAM4NFDI team is looking forward to your ideas!
~ German version below ~
Do you have an AAI-specific use case that you need support to implement? Then this is your chance.
As part of the IAM4NFDI project, we have planned so-called incubator cycles in order to be able to react flexibly to the wishes of future users. With the incubator cycles you have the opportunity to bring in your ideas and needs for the NFDI-AAI and, thus, help shape its development.
The second incubator cycle starts on August 1st, 2024 and we hereby call for applications. Please note the submission deadline is June 30, 2024. We look forward to your feedback and suggestions!
What do you have to do?
- Please look at the attached description of the process. (See IncubatorProcess2)
- Completely fill out the attached template (See Incubator-Template), describe your incubator project idea and send it to us by mail
- Present your idea to the Main Incubator Board (MIB) on July 11th (details to follow) in 5 minutes and answer any remaining questions. Please send us the presentation afterwards.
- Your support and participation in the implementation of the incubator cycle is essential – please, plan for this and ensure that you can contribute during the period before submitting your idea.
Please also have a look at our website if you have any further questions about the IAM4NFDI project.
We check all submissions and, if necessary, reserve them for following incubator cycles. The selection of incubator projects is made in consultation with Base4NFDI and depending on our available capacities.
If you have already submitted an idea in the first cycle and received feedback that you have been earmarked for the second round, you do not have to submit your idea again - if it has not changed.We will let you know by July 31, 2024, whether your incubator project idea can be implemented in the next cycle.
Best regards,
The IAM4NFDI project team
~~~
Im Rahmen des Projekts IAM4NFDI haben wir sogenannte Inkubator-Zyklen eingeplant, um flexibel auf die Wünsche der zukünftigen User_innen reagieren zu können. Über die Inkubator-Zyklen habt ihr die Möglichkeit, eure Vorstellungen und Bedürfnisse an der NFDI-AAI in das Projekt einzubringen und die Entwicklung dieser somit mitzugestalten.
Der zweite Inkubator-Zyklus startet am 01.08.2024 und wir rufen hiermit zur Bewerbung dafür auf. Bitte beachtet die Einreichungsfrist bis zum 30.06.2024. Wir freuen uns auf eure Rückmeldungen und Vorschläge!
Was müsst ihr tun?
- Bitte schaut euch die angehängte Beschreibung des Prozesses an. (Siehe InkubatorProzess2)
- Füllt das angehängte Template (Siehe Incubator-Template) vollständig (auf deutsch oder englisch) aus, beschreibt in diesem eure Inkubator-Projektidee und schickt es uns per Mail
- Präsentiert eure Idee in 5 Minuten vor dem Main Incubator Board (MIB) am 11. Juli (Details folgen) und beantwortet noch offene Fragen. Die Präsentation lasst ihr uns im Nachgang zukommen.
- Eure Unterstützung und euer Mitwirken bei der Umsetzung des Inkubator-Zyklus ist wesentlich – bitte plant das ein und stellt sicher, dass ihr in dem Zeitraum mitwirken könnt, bevor ihr eure Idee einreicht.
Schaut auch gerne auf unsere Webseite, wenn ihr noch weitere Fragen zum Projekt IAM4NFDI habt.
Wir prüfen alle Einreichungen und merken sie ggf. auch für folgende Inkubator-Zyklen vor. Die Auswahl der Inkubator-Projekte erfolgt in Rücksprache mit Base4NFDI und in Abhängigkeit von unseren verfügbaren Kapazitäten.
Wenn ihr im ersten Zyklus schon eine Idee eingereicht und die Rückmeldung bekommen habt, dass ihr für die zweite Runde vorgemerkt seid, müsst ihr eure Idee – wenn diese sich nicht verändert hat - nicht erneut einreichen.
Ob eure Inkubator-Projektidee im nächsten Zyklus umgesetzt werden kann, teilen wir euch bis zum 31. Juli 2024 mit
Viele Grüße
IAM4NFDI-Pojektteam
2024-06-03
Base4NFDI is thrilled to announce the release of updated versions of our proposal templates. The new versions are now available for download on the Base4NFDI templates page.
Please use this template for the upcoming rounds!
Firstly, the Initialisation Phase template has been updated to version 3.1 (link). This minor update includes more detailed information on the requirements for the finalisation of the initialisation phase, providing clearer guidance for setting up work plans to the proposal teams.
The more significant update concerns the Integration Phase template, now available in version 2.0 (link). This major revision introduces enhanced orientation and structure for reporting the status and results of the initialisation phase and outlook for successful finalisation. This reporting is the basis to decide whether the service design and prototype are ready for the integration phase.
Additionally, we have placed a stronger emphasis on community engagement and communication with consortia. This update stems from feedback gathered during a workshop held with representatives from all consortia at the beginning of this year. For example, services are now required to provide a fact sheet that offers a quick overview of their planned service design, contact information, integration requirements, and other key details.
These updates aim to improve the overall transparency and process of our decision process, ensuring that all consortia have the necessary information to stay up-to-date on basic service developments.
Base4NFDI remains committed to continuous improvement and appreciates the valuable feedback from our community in shaping these enhancements.
You can find the detailed release notes, including the last release notes, here.
2024-06-03
The Base4NFDI team has been visiting two consortia's community events in the past month, and we would like to share some of our impressions with you. We were excited to meet the communities of NFDI4Earth and NFDI4Biodiversity to see how their respective consortium is built and understand their needs regarding the basic services currently under development in Base4NFDI. We are looking forward to meeting more NFDI consortia this year and in the meantime, please enjoy a little recap of our engagement at both events below. See you hopefully soon at the next event!
NFDI4Biodiversity All Hands, Munich, April 24-26, 2024
In April, the NFDI Biodiversity community came together at the General Directorate of the Bavarian State Archives in Munich to celebrate their achievements and progress, and jointly discuss challenges and plans for the upcoming years. Next to jolly warm-up sessions with Menti-Mark, the program included a number of insightful hands-on workshops, a tools marketplace, and plenty of opportunities for networking.Base4NFDI showcased a poster on how Section Liaison Officers and Service Stewards contribute to the development of basic services within the NFDI. Our Service Stewards Jana and André had the opportunity to explore synergies between services of the consortium and the PID4NFDI and IAM4NFDI basic services. Additionally, the TS4NFDI team was attending and presented their terminology widgets during the Software Market. A huge thank you once again to the NFDI4Biodiversity team for hosting such an engaging event, providing valuable insights into the consortium's work and discussions about basic services.
NFDI4Earth Plenary, Dresden, May 22-24, 2024
The Earth System Sciences community gathered at the 3rd NFDI4Earth Plenary in Dresden to present recent developments on the pilot use cases and architecture leading to the future OneStop4All platform as well as to conduct several workshops organised by interest groups. The program can be found here.
Base4NFDI contributed with one invited talk, held by executive manager Najla Rettberg, and with a workshop on basic services, held by Sandra Zänkert and Xenia Ritter. The invited talk impressed with a round-up about Base4NFDI’s origin, structure, goals and vision, and explained how NFDI4Earth already applies one basic service (IAM4NFDI): IAM4NFDI is onboarded to manage access to NFDI4Earth’s training and education platform powered by open edX, where the community can enroll and pass in (e.g.) data analytics and programming classes on their own time.
The workshop offered a theoretical part where the currently six funded basic services (IAM4NFDI, TS4NFDI, PID4NFDI, Jupyter4NFDI, DMP4NFDI, KGI4NFDI) were presented, focussing on the question how the NFDI4Earth community can benefit and use those services. The interactive part of the workshop welcomed fruitful, helpful, and engaged discussions on specific use cases for the NFDI4Earth community, on how these services can add value, and what kind of support is expected. We were excited to see this engagement from the NFDI4Earth community and would like to express gratitude to share their ideas and thoughts with Base4NFDI to make our vision a success story.
Service Stewards Jana Tatscheck (left, PID4NFDI, TS4NFDI) and André Giesler (right, Jupyter4NFDI, IAM4NFDI) presenting the concept of Section Liaison Officers and Service Stewards at the NFDI4Biodiversity AllHands conference.
Najla Rettberg speaks about basic services that originated in NFDI sections (left) during the invited talk at the NFDI4Earth Plenary. Base4NFDI and NFDI4Earth Spokesperson Lars Bernard joined for the discussion (right).
Xenia Ritter (left) and Sandra Zänkert (right) about to start the basic services workshop at the NFDI4Earth Plenary.
2024-06-03
Beautiful weather, ferry trips, nice dinners … what might sound like a holiday was indeed our annual Base4NFDI retreat! The entire team of staff and co-spokes, met at GEOMAR in Kiel for a few days to work on everything Base-related: project roadmaps, strategic planning, and – of course – team building. Since Base4NFDI is built of a number of diverse teams, enriched by different backgrounds and fields of expertise, it is important to get everybody on board. With a number of fun activities, we were able to get to know each other better and to build on already existing common strengths and goals.
Alongside team building activities, we worked on our project roadmaps, on initiating plans for a future service portfolio, on updating our service application templates, and on consolidating operations.
Furthermore, our sessions on strategic planning were successful: We came up with further plans and aspects for a mission statement, we finalised the next steps for all activities concerning our International Advisory Board, and we identified a number of ways to further involve the NFDI community with our services.
While we are aware of the challenges that lay ahead of us, we are certain that with our team, the motivation and dedication every single one of us brings to the project, we are able to face all those challenges successfully. Until the next retreat in 2025, we will continue our good work and keep on supporting basic services for NFDI!
2024-05-15
We extend the deadline for submissions to the 1st Base4NFDI User Conference until May 29th, 2024 (end of day)!
Please submit your abstract via our event website: https://events.gwdg.de/event/658/abstracts/
If you have any questions, please contact
2024-04-29
The 22nd Research Data Alliance’s Plenary meeting is going to be a fully virtual event! From 14 May until 23 May 2024 people from all over the world are invited to attend the 22nd Plenary, focussing on Local Action – Global Connection. Aligning with the four themes of RDA’s strategic plan, collaboration and engagement with RDA’s global community through the sharing of local experiences, best practices and recommendations will be the core pillars of the plenary.
Important! Many of the themes and challenges overlap those which the NFDI consortia are tackling. Alignment and working together in an international collaborative context could be an important factor in co-developing recognised recommendations. Topics covered for example are:
Much like NFDI, RDA is a warm and welcoming community: The plenary offers different types of sessions, including introductory sessions, Working and Interest Group sessions, Communities of Practice sessions, as well as Birds of a Feather sessions. Take a look at the programme and check out which sessions you’d like to join! Whether you are already an active part within the RDA or a total newcomer, the RDA P22 is an opportunity to both share your expertise and learn from others. With its diverse programme and impressive range of speakers, you should not miss this opportunity to connect globally!
Registration will be open until 23 May 2024. You can register here.
Also: For the next plenary, the Call for Sessions is out. This in-person event will take place in the capital of Costa Rica, San José.
2024-04-15
Base4NFDI is delighted to announce that all proposals submitted this February in Round 4 – Jupyter4NFDI, DMP4NFDI, and KGI4NFDI – have been accepted for funding of the initialisation phase following the Consortia Assembly’s decision!
This marks a growth in the NFDI’s initiative to build basic services for consortia and demonstrates a step forward in the efforts to create RDM-enabling services from across the German research landscape.
Jupyter4NFDI will aim for a central JupyterHub providing access to various software stacks and computing resources across the NFDI consortia.
DMP4NFDI will provide tool hosting for data management plans, template standardisation, support and training for NFDI consortia.
KGI4NFDI will be a service hub to help consortia, institutions and researchers create and link knowledge graphs to ensure interoperability within the NFDI and beyond.
Congratulations to all basic service teams!
With the three new basic service entries, we are one step closer to facilitating an open science landscape and “OneNFDI”.
We are looking forward to what's ahead of us and encourage the NFDI community to join this endeavour by actively participating in the NFDI sections!
2024-04-12
Dear colleagues in the NFDI and beyond,as many of you already know, the first Base4NFDI User Conference (UC4B) will take place in Berlin on November 20/21, 2024.We cordially invite you to contribute to the conference program with this call.Please feel free to distribute the call in your sections, consortia, basic service teams and other relevant groups.
Further information can be found on the event website.
If you have any questions, please contact
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Call for Contributions
Today, research data is often stored in many different places, difficult to find and only available for a limited time. The NFDI aims towards better findability, accessibility and reusability of research data. Base4NFDI integrates and establishes basic services as common, interoperable solutions. Already existing services are adapted or extended to be usable for researchers from other disciplines. This way, parallel developments are avoided - since many scientific fields have similar requirements for a number of research data management services.
The Base4NFDI User Conference is set up to become the focal point in the development of Basic Services in NFDI. It is used to present, discuss and operationalize current developments in the Basic Services funded via Base4NFDI as well as potential future Basic Services. The User conference programme welcomes participation from the NFDI community and beyond.
Members from sections and its working groups, consortia, Basic Services and beyond are invited to contribute to the discussion and participate in the event, with the long term goal of collaboratively shaping the service offering Base4NFDI can provide to both NFDI and the wider RDM landscape.
For that reason we ask to submit abstracts to demonstrate activities around Base4NFDI services.
Possible topics for abstracts:
Formalities:
We request abstracts of a maximum of 500 words. Please use the template linked at the event page for submission. Please submit the abstract here by May 15, 2024:
https://events.gwdg.de/event/658/abstracts/
The review will be done in collaboration with the NFDI sections, the Base4NFDI Basic Services teams and the Base4NFDI staff, the decision will be made by the program chairs.
Accepted abstracts will either get a slot for
At least one person from each submission is expected to attend the conference. Virtual participation is not possible. Abstracts and slides/posters will be published on Zenodo after the conference. Accepted abstracts may be revised before publication.
Further details can be found here.
The Program Chairs,
Reinhard Altenhöner, Raphael Ritz, Sonja Schimmler
2024-03-21
Great news for our community: Base4NFDI is now on LinkedIn!
We're excited to share latest news and updates from the world of Basic Services in the NFDI-Community.
Discover inspiring events and read about important milestones from Base4NFDI and NFDI research disciplines but more importantly: connect with us, the NFDI-Consortia and Basic Service Development Teams.
We’re looking forward to meeting you, expanding our network and engaging with you.
#Base4NFDI #NFDI #ResearchSoftware #DataManagement
2024-03-15
Base4NFDI supports its funded services to understand their target group by developing Personas - now you can use the workshop materials and template too! Click here to find our Persona Creation Kit.
Have you ever struggled to understand your service's target group? A lot of time and effort went into development of a service but now many of your potential users are not aware of the service, don’t get its benefits or are struggling to use it?
Personas are archetypes - fictional characters - that represent typical users. They help designers and developers of services efficiently identify and empathize with user needs, characteristics, and goals.
In Base4NFDI we fund and support the creation of basic services that are potentially relevant to all consortia – and thereby different scientific disciplines. Basic services are technical-organizational solutions that may include storage and computing services, software and workflows as well as personnel support and are scalable, sustainable and effective.
In the requirements analysis phase, we support basic service teams with workshops and introduce methods to gather personas, epics and user stories to enable a user-centric design that fits the needs of the scientific community. One of these measures were two persona creation workshops in November 2023 and February 2024 where the first 6 personas were created by Base4NFDI-funded projects.
You want to develop personas but do not have a basic service proposal (yet)? We derived the Base4NFDI Persona Creation Kit from the workshops we did and published it on Zenodo. So, if you are interested, go ahead, learn about the process, see some examples or gather people from your team and develop your own personas.
Image credit: pch.vector on Freepik
2024-02-28
The RDA Deutschland Tagung 2024 took place 20/21 February at the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ). The RDA DE Association, in cooperation with the State and Library University Göttingen (SUB) and the Helmholtz Open Science Office, organised a versatile event, including two interesting keynotes and a number of talks covering a broad range of different topics. Furthermore, projects and initiatives were given the opportunity to present their work during a poster session. Base4NFDI was represented with two posters: An introduction to Base4NFDI , and another poster specifically dedicated to our Section Liaison Officers and Service Stewards .
Due to the pandemic, this year’s RDA DE Tagung was the first in-person since 2020. The event was framed by an opening keynote “Die Eckpunkte der europäischen Datenstrategie” given by Renate Nikolay, and the closing keynote “Who owns your data? Who should benefit from it? The effect of UN policy decision on biological data management” by Dr. Amber Hartman Scholz. Both keynotes drew attention to the multiple challenges that data collecting, storing, and reuse have on several levels, primarily focussing their talks on ethical issues.
The variety of talks, spanning from repositories and archives, RDA’s current strategic plan to digital emergency preservation, invited the audience to lively discuss each topic and served as a formidable basis for in-between conversations over a coffee and during the poster session. Each poster was briefly introduced in a ‘Minute Madness’ where the authors could advertise their work. While our introductory poster to B4N attracted people who were interested in which basic services they could potential use for their own work – both within and outside NFDI consortia –, our poster about the Service Stewards and Section Liaison Officers raised questions about how which support a basic service team can expect from those two groups of staff and how their expertise can best be utilised for cooperation between the different stakeholders.
For our work in B4N, the RDA Deutschland Tagung was an interesting and useful insight into an active and intrinsically motivated community whose activities and outputs will continue to play a major role globally. We are looking forward to strengthening our bonds with the RDA and overall international players.
Our Base4NFDI team at RDA Deutschland Tagung 2024.
2024-02-23
Base4NFDI is excited to announce the release of version 3.0 of our proposal template for the Initialisation Phase - the first of three phases for Basic Service candidates. The new version is now available for download here and on the Base4NFDI templates page.
Please use this template for the upcoming rounds!
Changes:
This update is a result of valuable feedback gathered from various proposal teams and NFDI Consortia, coupled with insights gained from our experiences within Base4NFDI. Our aim is to streamline
processes and enhance clarity. Our commitment to refining templates is an ongoing endeavor, and we encourage you to share your suggestions with Task Area 3 by reaching out to
2024-01-25
Base4NFDI in a Nutshell: Base4NFDI is an initiative to create common and shared services for the NFDI community. The goal is to underpin the activities within the NFDI disciplinary consortia by providing efficient NFDI-wide core services to support research data sharing. One of the main focus areas is to provide a sustainable framework in which to roll out generic services as well as a coherent service landscape. These services will grow, evolve and become permanent features of the NFDI landscape.
Three building blocks of development: Base4NFDI supports new services getting off the ground via a programme of financial support. Each service goes through three separate project phases: initialization, implementation and roll-out, during which all the NFDI consortia will have the opportunity to iteratively decide whether to support each service in the next stage. This will ensure basic data sharing needs of the consortia are met and guarantees a commitment to use the service.
Base4NFDI encourages potential services to integrate and adapt already existing component parts of the German research service landscape, as well as ensuring interoperability and connectivity with infrastructures outside of Germany, for example EOSC. Monitoring and refinement of the services through user feedback will be consistently developed and realized. Meanwhile, the Base4NFDI staff supports and consults with regards to all topics from requirement engineering to communication & training in each of the three service stages.
The team is growing:
1. We now have a new managing director, Najla Rettberg, who is based at TU Dresden. You can get in touch directly with her via email (
2. Support for implementation: We are also pleased to launch our Service Steward programme. We now have four dedicated stewards whose remit is to accompany the services over their three stages and give relevant support for adoption and service integration. See who they are here.
3. An ear to the ground: At the same time, Base4NFDI is committed to keeping up to date with the Section activities and outputs, where ideas for potential services will derive from. It does this via three Section Liaisons who are now in place to become embedded in Section meetings and fully understand the potential for new services. See their names here.
How can you contact the Base4NFDI team? Send an email to the Office (
Base4NFDI is community-driven – we are here for you to work together to co-design these basic services for the whole of NFDI. We are happy to listen and hear your ideas. We welcome your involvement!
Propose to us! If you are preparing for one of the next rounds (deadlines 15 February - 1 May - 1 August), feel free to reach out to us directly at
More information:
B
ase is transparent: You can see all abstracts of projects who applied in 2023 here. The three projects in the initialization and integration phase are here. Each of the ongoing projects will be presented regularly at the NFDI talks - stay tuned for the schedule. Remember to keep an eye out for our list of events.
Up and running projects: More information about the individual projects: you can read them here on the Base4NFDI website. You can view the abstracts in our
Zenodo community
2023-12-20
We’re happy to announce the first Base4NFDI User Conference on 20 and 21 November 2024 in Berlin!
Our invitation goes out to everyone interested in actively using & shaping future basic services of the NFDI. The conference will be a place to talk about requirements, exchange ideas with the communities and to get to know the current developments in detail. We will provide updates on the conference on our website base4nfdi.de soon.
Our best wishes to everyone for the holidays and a happy new year.
2023-12-06
Mark your calendars! The deadlines for submitting the basic service applications for rounds 5 and 6 needed to be adjusted due to fixed consortium assembly meeting dates and the required time for the decision-making process:
Round 5: May 1st, 2024 - previous: May 15th, 2024
Round 6: August 1st, 2024 - previous: September 15th, 2024
2023-12-06
A new version of the Base4NFDI proposal has been published on Zenodo. This version reflects the funding cuts, milestones/deliverables, and the updated term of the project (01/03/2023 to 29/02/2028).
https://zenodo.org/records/10245518
2023-11-20
We are delighted to announce IAM4NFDI's entry into the Integration phase in early 2024, following the Consortia Assembly’s meeting in the third round.
The basic service
IAM4NFDI
connects and expands current and existing identity access management systems with the goal to access digital resources NFDI-wide and beyond. IAM4NFDI aims to become a decentralised, federated IAM (Identity and Access Management) for approx. 5000 home institutions.
The integration phase centres on the (further) development of the service, its testing and introduction as a prototype. In order to ensure the connection of as many use cases as possible within NFDI, the service will be harmonised with existing solutions.
Congratulations to the basic service project team!
2023-09-11
One aim of Base4NFDI is to provide a basis for better findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability of research data. This also includes the publication of data. For this purpose, we have moved the Base4NFDI Proposal to Zenodo for better a find- and reusability. Take a look.
Bernard, Lars, Altenhöner, Reinhard, Böhm, Franziska, Diepenbroek, Michael, Ebert, Barbara, Fluck, Juliane, Herres-Pawlis, Sonja, Klinger, Axel, Koepler, Oliver, Lorenz, Sören, Mathiak, Brigitte, Miller, Bernhard, Pelz, Peter, Rißler-Pipka, Nanette, Ritz, Raphael, Sax, Ulrich, Schimmler, Sonja, Schörner, Thomas, Schubotz, Moritz, … Suchodoletz, Dirk von. (2022). Base4NFDI - Basic Services for NFDI (Version 1). Zenodo.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8329192
2023-08-24
"Connecting Communities" is the theme of the first Conference on Research Data Infrastructure (CoRDI) , which will take place from 12 to 14 September in Karlsruhe, Germany. By invitation from the German National Research Data Infrastructure association (NFDI), more than 600 national and international stakeholders from all areas of research and the infrastructures will be present. Including, of course, the Base4NFDI team!
If you have any questions about the project, the submission process or the basic services currently under development, please join us at the "Market of the Consortia”. You can meet us on ...
Wednesday, 13th September, 12:30 p.m.-2 p.m.
Wednesday, 13th September, 3:30 p.m.- 4 p.m.
Thursday, 14th September, 12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m.
Thursday, 14th September, 3 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
2023-08-15
Four new proposals have been submitted to Base4NFDI in the final submission round that ended on August 15th 2023. Three applications were submitted for the initialization phase and one for the integration phase (IAM4NFDI). Take a look and get to know the services that are being discussed in the upcoming weeks:
NFDI Research Software Marketplace "nfdi.software"
nfdi.software will implement a central research software marketplace to enable access to a large portfolio of research software relevant to researchers and research software engineers. nfdi.software will integrate information on relevance and adoption of software in communities and connect research software to publications, data, services and more.
A central Jupyter Hub "Jupyter4NFDI"
Though Jupyter notebooks are widely used across scientific disciplines, their deployment through individual JupyterHubs results in access barriers to computational and data resources. Jupyter4NFDI aims to unify these efforts by offering a centralized service, simplify access, support the import of projects and extend the reach of Jupyter to a broader audience.
Competence Training for Research Data Management "RDMTraining4all"
RDMTraining4all aims to develop modular teaching concepts and materials that can be used to create training programmes and courses in research data management (RDM). Experts in RDM training will furthermore support training responsibles in the consortia in transforming these modular concepts and materials into discipline-specific training programmes and running and certifying the corresponding training activities.
Identity and Access Management “IAM4NFDI”
IAM4NFDI is concerned with connecting and expanding existing and emerging IAM systems in a way that researchers from different domains and institutions are able to access digital resources existing within NFDI as easily as possible, including access to and exchange with external infrastructures and resources. IAM4NFDI aims to create a decentralized, federated Identity and Access Management and will conclude their initialization phase in February 2024.
IAM4NFDI was the first proposal to successfully pass the first round of submissions in February 2023. After the last few months of development, the service is now ready to move from the initialization phase to the integration phase.
A decision about the funding of these four services will be made in October by the Consortia Assembly and after evaluation by the Technical Expert Committee. This year, NFDI sections were able to submit applications for basic services on three dates. Are you planning a proposal yourself? Check our templates and submission rounds for 2024!
