NFDI4Microbiota Helpdesk: Centralized Support for Microbial Research Data Management

NFDI4Microbiota – the German National Research Data Infrastructure for Microbiota Research – aims to empower the microbiology research community through improved access to data, analysis services, standardized metadata, and training. The NFDI4Microbiota Helpdesk is a our central contact point designed to assist researchers across all domains of microbiology research with questions related to microbial (omics) data and associated metadata. We welcome questions from all individuals working with microbial data – whether students, early-career researchers, senior scientists, or data stewards. Support is provided irrespective of the organism (e.g. bacteria, archaea, eukaryotic microbes or viruses), environment (e.g. soil, aquatic, host-associated or plant), or data type (e.g. nucleic acid sequences, protein data, functional genomics, image data). Requests are addressed by a distributed network of NFDI4Microbiota experts, including researchers, software developers and data stewards, ensuring a wide range of expertise. Support is delivered through a two-tiered system: 1. A core team of data stewards and research data management (RDM) professionals handles requests related to RDM within the context of microbiology. 2. Domain-specific experts provide deeper insights into topics such as workflow standards, tool provenance, database setup and the use of NFDI4Microbiota services such as ARUNA (https://aruna-engine.org/), StrainInfo (https://straininfo.dsmz.de/), VirJenDB (https://virjendb.org/) and CLoWM (https://clowm.bi.denbi.de/). Researchers can reach the Helpdesk via a dedicated email address (helpdesk@nfdi4microbiota.de) or an online contact form (https://nfdi4microbiota.de/contact-form.html). All questions are documented, and recurring topics are distilled into a curated FAQ and Knowledge Base – resources designed to serve both as a self-help hub and a living reference for the broader community. Common questions include "How can I participate in NFDI4Microbiota?" or "What metadata standards are used to document microbiology data?". Looking ahead, we aim to integrate our FAQ into platforms such as the RDM StackExchange Community (https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/128340/research-data-management). This would further encourage knowledge sharing, reduce redundancy and foster best practices across institutions and disciplines. By streamlining access to expert support and curated resources, the NFDI4Microbiota Helpdesk plays a crucial role in enhancing the reproducibility, transparency and efficiency of microbiota research in Germany. It acts not just as a support system, but as a bridge between scientific inquiry and sustainable research data infrastructure.