More consortia (26), more members (279) and more face-to-face events: 2023 was a year of growth for NFDI. Thanks to new formats, the research data community has become even better connected. Moreover, the first three NFDI-wide services were launched.

We are stepping away from Twitter/X in favour of platforms that are currently more aligned with our values. Find us on our own welcoming Mastodon instance or LinkedIn.

Every week leading up to Christmas we are hosting a giveaway for a candy-filled NFDI mug on our LinkedIn and Mastodon. The first round starts on the 1st of December.

In the third Base4NFDI call for proposals, the IAM4NFDI application for funding as a basic service was approved by the NFDI Consortia Assembly for a two-year integration phase. IAM4NFDI is thus the first service to enter the second phase after its initialisation phase.

The International Data Week takes place from 23 to 26 October in Salzburg. NFDI will present a panel discussion at the event and will be represented at the poster session.

Around 700 participants attended the first edition of the Conference on Research Data Infrastructure (CoRDI) at the Campus South of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) from 12 to 14 September. We have summarized five highlights of the conference.

The NFDI Task Force for Evaluation and Reporting (TFER) does preparatory work for the interim reports of the consortia and the structural evaluation of NFDI. Members of the Task Force have written the white paper “Dealing with BLV targets as a basis for structural evaluation”.

We would like to invite you to look behind the surface of the online world with us. Under the title “Behind the Click”, Dutch artist and researcher Julia Janssen will visually explore topics such as Artificial Intelligence, the bias of algorithms and data profiling. The public evening lecture will take place as part of the first Conference on Research Data Infrastructure (CoRDI) on 12 September at 7.30 pm in the KIT Audimax.

The development of the NFDI portfolio for basic services is progressing with two further projects. The Consortia Assembly (KV) of the NFDI Association decided in its meeting on 7 July to fund two basic service applications.
In a one-year initialisation phase, a service for the NFDI-wide provision of persistent identifiers (such as DOI) as well as a service to support the description of data through uniform terminologies will be funded.

Registration for the first Conference on Research Data Infrastructure (CoRDI) is now open. We look forward to welcoming you to Karlsruhe from 12 to 14 September 2023.

The NFDI Task Force for Evaluation and Reporting (formerly the Task Force Monitoring) is working on the preparation of the interim reports of the consortia and the structural evaluation of NFDI. For this purpose, members of the task force wrote the white paper “Interim Report Reference”. The paper creates a basis for the consortia’s interim reports to the German Research Foundation (DFG) through jointly agreed definitions of cross-consortium topics.

Welcome! Seven further consortia and Base4NFDI will be included in the federal and state funding of NFDI from March. We are very pleased that the NFDI network continues to grow.

Research data form the basis for knowledge and innovation throughout all scientific disciplines. They play a fundamental role in the progress of our society. The key to using these data treasures is an effective infrastructure. With the first edition of the Conference on Research Data Infrastructure from 12 to 14 September 2023, the Association German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) is initiating a conference that will focus on establishing interdisciplinary research data management (RDM). The Call for Papers is online now.

2022 brought expansion, further development and strengthening for NFDI. In the second year of the association, the first four sections took off, the consortia successfully launched Base4NFDI, the third-party funded project Data Literacy started and NFDI formed connections with other relevant actors. Overall, a very positive balance can be drawn. We present the biggest highlights and cuts of the NFDI year 2022 here.

The first EOSC-A Tripartite Event in Germany was hosted by the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) on 24 November 2022 in Karlsruhe. The event was designed to strengthen and broaden the links between the NFDI and EOSC. It was organized as a hybrid event with contributions online and a panel discussion in Karlsruhe. The audience could join the event via livestream.