The Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration – FAIR data for Helmholtz

In late 2019, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres – as being the largest research organization in Germany involving 18 autonomous centres and more than 43,000 employees working across six research fields – launched the Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration (HMC) platform. HMC was established with the mission to leverage the visibility and reusability of data across the Helmholtz Association and beyond, and to turn FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) research data into reality. HMC’s vision is to create a sustainable, distributed, semantically enriched Helmholtz data space that scientists can use to seamlessly share and re-use data in new ways.

Over the last three years we have put great efforts into reaching our goals of fostering FAIR research data in Helmholtz. HMC’s work focuses on three key strategic areas in which we have achieved great results so far: 

(1) Assessing and monitoring the state of FAIR data across Helmholtz:
Through a mixed method approach we are continuously learning about the data ecosystem within Helmholtz and beyond and communicate them to relevant stakeholders. Those findings enable individuals and institutions alike to identify concrete actions to improve data handling. Measures and results so far include community survey conducted, a FAIR data dashboard and an information portal established.

(2) Facilitating connectivity of Helmholtz research data:
The Helmholtz data space will enable scientists to easily find and combine data from different scientific domains. Within our platform its technical and social features were defined. Several tools were developed and deployed, workflows for e.g., semantic harmonization were set up and a Helmholtz Knowledge Graph is in preparation.

(3) Transforming (meta)data recommendations into implementations: 
Our stakeholders act on different levels of the Helmholtz research data ecosystem. Through offering measures such as practical advice, training, workshops and guidelines on implementing community recommendations we aim to bridge different levels in knowledge, communication and technical capabilities between them and harmonize the approaches across Helmholtz. Further, annual calls for community projects are used to implement specific community solutions.

Our work is closely intertwined with internal Helmholtz (e.g. Helmholtz Open Science Office), national (e.g. National Research Infrastructure Germany) and international (e.g. EOSC, RDA) efforts which is ensured through collaboration with the relevant partners.

After three years on the road to FAIR Helmholtz data, we will present our approach and the results achieved so far in the poster.