Collaborative work in NFDI

The non-profit association National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) promotes science and research through a National Research Data Infrastructure. Its aim is to develop and establish an overarching research data management (RDM) for Germany and to increase the efficiency of the entire German science system. After a two-and-a-half year build up phase, the process of adding new consortia, each representing a different data domain, has ended in March 2023. NFDI now has 26 disciplinary consortia (and one additional basic service collaboration). Now the full extent of cross-consortial interaction is beginning to show.

The attached table of jointly documented cross-consortial collaborations is based on a White Paper ratified by the NFDI association’s consortia assembly in January 2023. It defines collaborations as “the exchange of information on or development of common approaches to managing the research data of at least one domain.” From the perspective of the consortia assembly, “A necessary condition for any collaboration is that activities are on behalf and in line with the strategic aims of a consortium and are not activities by individuals within them only.” As the consortia were established in three separate rounds with roughly a year in between, some consortia have had more opportunities to participate in the NFDI association than others which shows in their higher levels of interaction. We expect these differences to diminish over time with further updates of this dataset.

The tabular overview of the collaborations was created as a collaborative work in which all consortia had the opportunity to enter joint activities. Nevertheless, this document does not claim to be complete. Instead, it should be understood as a first version; future collaboration will be added and the document will be published in updated versions.