NFDI4Chem's approach to efficient data management planning in chemistry

The landscape of research data management (RDM) in the chemical sciences is evolving rapidly, driven by the growing need for accessible, reusable and sustainable data infrastruc-tures. The NFDI4Chem consortium is at the forefront of these efforts and aims to foster a transformation in the way chemical research data is managed, shared and preserved. At the heart of the consortium's efforts is the creation of an RDM infrastructure [1]. We will outline the strategic initiatives undertaken by NFDI4Chem to support RDM through the development of a chemistry-specific Data Management Plan (DMP) template, collaboration with the DMP4NFDI base service, and planned active contribution as an incubator project in the DMP4NFDI integration phase. Recognising the need for discipline-specific guidance on RDM, NFDI4Chem initiated the cre-ation of a DMP template that addresses the specialties of chemical research. The develop-ment was based on a comprehensive approach that included surveys and interviews with chemists to identify their needs and collect chemistry-specific answers to the individual DMP questions [2]. The resulting chemistry-specific DMP template, aligned with the DFG checklist and incorporating community feedback, was made publicly available on Zenodo [3] and as an RDMO (Research Data Management Organizer) catalog on GitHub [4]. In addition, an RDMO instance for NFDI4Chem was set up as a use case in the collaboration with DMP4NFDI [5]. RDMO4Chem should facilitate the creation of detailed and standardised DMPs and set a new standard for data management in the chemical sciences. The custom-ised RDMO instance provides various catalogs for DMP, Software Management Plan (SMP) and policy creation and therefore is an important tool for researchers, enabling them to man-age data and software easily and efficiently. NFDI4Chem's involvement in the DMP4NFDI integration phase as an incubator project em-phasises our strong commitment to improving the RDM landscape. Through active participa-tion in community outreach, training and feedback mechanisms, we plan to play a key role in refining the DMP4NFDI service. The collaboration aims to integrate the DMP4NFDI offering into the NFDI4Chem service portfolio, leading to the development of a scalable and compre-hensive DMP infrastructure. By presenting an overview of how customised tools, collaboration and community engage-ment are helping to promote a systematic approach to RDM at the Conference of Research Data Infrastructure (CoRDI), we aim to share our insights and learnings with the broader re-search data community, fostering the advancement of RDM practices across disciplines.