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The German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) aims to make data from science and research available, network them and thus make them usable in the long term. Institutions from various research fields are involved in NFDI. They work on services, training offers for researchers and standards for handling data.

Goals
According to the RfII, the goal of the NFDI is "to create a reliable and sustainable service portfolio that covers generic and subject-specific needs of research data management in Germany." This service portfolio is to result from the interaction of many actors, so that a "polycentric network" is formed. The DFG describes the objective of the NFDI as follows: "The national research data infrastructure (NFDI) is intended to systematically develop, sustainably secure and make accessible the data holdings of science and research and to network them (inter)nationally." In a press release, the Joint Science Conference (GWK) formulated in November 2018: "The NFDI is to set standards in data management and, as a digital, regionally distributed and networked repository of knowledge, secure research data sustainably and make it usable."

Structure
The federal-state agreement provides for the NFDI as a whole to be given a structure that includes, in particular, a consortium assembly, a scientific senate and a directorate. The consortium assembly is responsible for the "substantive-technical principles" of the NFDI and will consist of one speaker from each consortium. The Scientific Senate is the "content-related strategic body" of the NFDI and will consist of four representatives from each of the Consortium Assembly, the Alliance of Science Organisations and the Joint Science Conference as well as the Director of the NFDI. The latter will chair the Scientific Senate. Finally, the Directorate consists of the Director with an office. Other members of the structure are: The Board of Trustees, which is an administrative-strategic control body. Its task is to supervise and appoint the Directorate, approve the admission and exclusion of members, and approve financial and organisational decisions. The General Assembly, with 191 members, is responsible for the activity report.

At the beginning of May 2019, it was announced in a decision of the Gemeinsamen Wissenschaftskonferenz (GWK) that the directorate of the NFDI will be located in Karlsruhe. The Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) and the FIZ Karlsruhe are entrusted with the founding and establishment of the NFDI. KIT Professor York Sure-Vetter was appointed Director of the NFDI Directorate by the GWK in February 2020 and took office on 1. March 2020.

The NFDI will consist of a number of so-called consortia, which will be formed by specialist scientific communities and infrastructure partners forming around a specific sub-area of the science system defined thematically, methodologically, by the objects or by subject groups. Each consortium will then develop and offer a service portfolio for research data management for this sub-area. For the RfII, the "science-driven design of the NFDI" is of central importance. The DFG describes the consortia as follows:

"Consortia are associations of users and providers of research data designed for long-term cooperation and include universities, non-university research institutions, departmental research institutions, academies and other publicly funded information infrastructure institutions. They are usually organised according to subject groups or methods and aim to ensure and sustain access to and use of research data relevant to them." The member organisations of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) e.V. association can participate in various sections that deal with topics shared by all or several consortia. The sections are structured according to topics. As of March 2022, there are four different sections:

Common Infrastructures Section (section-infra):  One of the goals of this section is to work on a multi-cloud-based infrastructure. Technical and organisational structures are also to be created by this section. These should be designed to be as sustainable and interdisciplinary as possible. The section wants to cooperate with various initiatives within and outside the NFDI. The section is coordinated by members of NFDI4Biodiversity and NFDI4Cat.

The Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects Section (section-ELSA): The aim of this section is to integrate the ethical, social and legal aspects more strongly and to create guidelines across consortia. Task forces are to be formed and further research questions created. Tasks here are to clarify the legal positions of scientists within the FDM and also to assess and deal with conflicts of interest. Legal issues and various research procedures will also be examined. Among the founding members are NFDI4Health and DataPLANT.

The Section (Meta)data, Terminologies and Provenance (section-metadata): The task of the section is to successfully make the subsections mentioned here visible against the FAIR criteria. The sub-section metadata deals with the issues of discoverability of data, data standards and persistent identifier systems. The terminology section deals with top-level ontologies and the question of the usability of specialised vocabulary. The last part, the subject area Provenance, deals with legal, technical and cultural aspects of metadata in the field of creation. Proposals for uniform documentation procedures will also be made here. The Section has already envisaged several collaborations outside the NFDI. For example, the Section intends to collaborate with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), World Data Systems (WDS) and various FDM country initiatives.

Training and Education Section (section-edutrain): The objectives of this section are to teach data literacy and FAIR principles at all levels of society (higher education, industry, training, etc.). It also aims to create collaborative teaching platforms and raise awareness of FDM in many communities. This section is committed to collaborating with the other sections as well as initiatives outside the spectrum of the NFDI. Some of the partners can be found outside Germany. There is a significant research effort with the other sections. Efforts are also made to work with partners outside the NFDI. The section is coordinated by members of the two consortia NFDI4Ing and NFDI4Chem.

NFDI consortia
In three successive rounds of calls for proposals, consortia applications will be submitted and a total of up to 30 consortia will be funded. These will then jointly form the National Research Data Infrastructure. The review of consortia proposals is coordinated by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), with the final funding decision resting with the Joint Science Conference (GWK). For the selection process, the DFG has appointed a panel of experts whose task is "to evaluate the proposals on the basis of a scientific, informational and structural review and to formulate funding recommendations to the GWK". The call for proposals for the funding programme was published on 6 June 2019.

Funded consortia
In the first round of calls for proposals, the following nine consortia were successful :

In the second round of calls, a further ten consortia were funded :
 * NFDI4Culture (Humanities)
 * KonsortSWD (Social Sciences)
 * GHGA (Medicine)
 * NFDI4Health (Medicine)
 * DataPLANT (Biology)
 * NFDI4BioDiversity (Biology)
 * NFDI4Cat (Chemistry)
 * NFDI4Chem (Chemistry)
 * NFDI4Ing (Engineering Sciences)
 * BERD@NFDI (Social and Behavioural Sciences)
 * DAPHNE4NFDI (Physics)
 * FAIRmat (Physics)
 * MaRDI (Mathematics)
 * NFDI4DataScience (Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering)
 * NFDI4Earth (Earth Sciences)
 * NFDI4Microbiota (Life Sciences)
 * NFDI-MatWerk (Materials Science and Engineering)
 * PUNCH4NFDI (Physics)
 * Text+ (Humanities)

Humanities and cultural studies
Four proposal initiatives (NFDI4Culture, Text+, NFDI4Objects and NFDI4Memory) form the core of the humanities consortia. As a group open to all humanities and cultural studies initiatives, they are linked via a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to cover overlapping areas in a meaningful way. Funding recommendations have already been made for two consortia in June 2020 (NFDI4Culture) and July 2021 (Text+).

Background
The National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) is an initiative launched by the Council for Information Infrastructures (RfII), launched by the Joint Science Conference (GWK) and funded by Bund and Länder. It is intended to provide the German science system with a "nationwide, distributed and growing network" of services and advisory offers for research data management are made available. The corresponding federal-state agreement was concluded in November 2018. The agreed funding volume amounts to up to 90 million euros per year in the period 2019-2028.

The motivation for the initiative encompasses several aspects. Firstly, the observation that the ubiquitous digitisation of society has also encompassed the field of science in its entire breadth, has already profoundly changed it and will increasingly do so in the future. Secondly, the conviction that the competitiveness and innovation potential of German research and development are directly related to the performance and efficiency of the use of digital research data and that this efficiency is currently lacking due to, among other things, small-scale structures, project-based initiatives, temporary funding models and a lack of standardisation. And thirdly, the observation that corresponding initiatives have also been launched at European level (in particular the European Open Science Cloud), to which the German research landscape should be able to connect and to which Germany can contribute with the NFDI.

The decisive impetus for the NFDI initiative and for its design came from several papers of the Council for Information Infrastructures (RfII), which were published between 2016 and 2018. The initial situation is analysed in detail in the report Achievement from Diversity of May 2016. A first impulse for the establishment of an NFDI was the paper Step by Step - or: What Does Who Bring? of April 2017, which described some possible goals of an NFDI and the prerequisites on the part of the scientific communities on the one hand, and the infrastructure partners on the other. The paper Collaboration as an Opportunity of March 2018 outlines in particular a number of characteristics of an NFDI with regard to the following points, among others: Design, type of user involvement, formation of consortia, structure and governance as well as quality management, international connection and resource requirements. Finally, in December 2018, the paper Broad-based and research-oriented: consortia capable of action was published as the last discussion impulse of the RfII for the time being. This paper focuses on the design of the individual consortia and describes how the users of the NFDI are involved and how the individual consortia can be tailored (for example, thematically or methodologically). The paper also emphasises the importance of fostering a "data culture" and corresponding competencies across the scientific community. Finally, it describes ways to build a layered portfolio of services with common generic services as well as domain-specific services building on them.

Resonance
The discussion papers of the Council for Information Infrastructures and the political considerations on the establishment of the NFDI have received much attention in the scientific community in Germany. This manifests itself, among other things, in the statements and position papers of various stakeholders (until Feb. 2019):


 * scientific alliances:
 * German Federation for Biological Data (GFBio)
 * Early consortial initiatives: NFDI4Chem, NFDI4ING , NFDI4Life and NFDI4Earth
 * scientific professional associations:
 * Society for Music Research (GfM)
 * Association of Historians of Germany (VHD)
 * Verband Digital Humanities im deutschsprachigen Raum (DHd)
 * Workshop series "Science-led research infrastructures for the humanities and cultural studies in Germany" with representatives of many professional associations
 * Science organisations (and their associations)
 * Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
 * Alliance of Science Organisations
 * Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities


 * Archive and infrastructure facilities:
 * Nestor Archiving Network
 * Conference of the Heads of the Federal and State Archives Administrations (KLA)
 * Deutsche Bibliotheksverband e.V. (dbv)

The first publications in specialist journals and science-related publications on the topic of NFDI have also already appeared, including in the Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, in the journal Research and Teaching as well as in BIBLIOTHEK.Research and Practice. The journal Bausteine Forschungsdatenmanagement has published a special issue on the NFDI. Finally, reports in the daily press should also be mentioned, including in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and in Die Tageszeitung taz.

Literature

 * Council for Information Infrastructures: Performance from Diversity. Recommendations on structures, processes and funding of research data management in Germany. Göttingen: RfII, 2016. http://www.rfii.de/download/rfii-empfehlungen-2016/
 * Council for Information Infrastructures: Step by Step -- or: What Does Who Bring? RfII, Göttingen April 2017. http://www.rfii.de/download/rfii-diskussionspapier-2017/
 * Council for Information Infrastructures: Collaboration as an Opportunity. Zweiter Diskussionsimpuls zur Ausgestaltung einer Nationalen Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI) für die Wissenschaft in Deutschland. RfII, Göttingen March 2018. http://www.rfii.de/download/rfii-diskussionspapier-maerz-2018/
 * Joint Science Conference: Bekanntmachung der Bund-Länder-Vereinbarung zu Aufbau und Förderung einer Nationalen Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI). Bundesanzeiger, 28 November 2018. https://www.gwk-bonn.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/Dokumente/Papers/NFDI.pdf
 * Council for Information Infrastructures: Broad-based and research-oriented: consortia capable of action. Third discussion impulse on the design of a National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) for science in Germany. RfII, Göttingen December 2018. http://www.rfii.de/download/rfii-diskussionspapier-dezember-2018/ (Permalink: https://rfii.de/?p=3509)
 * Maik Bierwirth et al: Leipzig-Berlin statement on NFDI cross-cutting issues in infrastructure development, Zenodo, June 2020 10.5281/zenodo.3895209
 * Special issue of the journal Bausteine Forschungsdatenmanagement 2 (2021) on NFDI.

Weblinks

 * Website of the National Research Data Infrastructure, https://www.nfdi.de/
 * Information Infrastructure Council, http://www.rfii.de/de/start/
 * GWK, "Information Infrastructures / NFDI", https://www.gwk-bonn.de/themen/weitere-arbeitsgebiete/informationsinfrastrukturen-nfdi/
 * DFG, http://www.dfg.de/foerderung/programme/nfdi/
 * "Position papers and press releases" on the pages of the initiative Research Infrastructures for the Humanities, http://forschungsinfrastrukturen.de/doku.php/positionspapiere

Individual references
Category:Research Category:Research Data Infrastructure Category:Science and research in Germany Category:Organisation (Science)