Objectives
NFDI4Chem’s efforts and decisions are guided by our vision that all chemists publish FAIR data. Our mission is to support scientists in their efforts to collect, store, process, analyse, publish, and reuse research data in chemistry. We develop and maintain a national research data infrastructure for the research domain of chemistry in Germany, and we enable innovative services and science based on research data.
To translate our vision and mission into reality, we have identified several key objectives:
In the second funding period, the consortium aims to advance these achievements by consolidating this infrastructure, developing a model for its sustainable maintenance and operation, and fostering cultural change for its widespread adoption.
Key Objective 1: Evolve the federation of services and repositories for storing, disclosing, searching and reusing research data. Integrate community standards for the seamless integration of distributed data sources and uniform access to data for innovative data reuse.
Key Objective 2: Lead international community processes to establish minimum information (MI) standards for data and machine-readable metadata to create semantically rich linked chemistry data.
Key Objective 3: Develop and foster the application of Smart Laboratory Environments by promoting the use of digital tools in all stages of research and creating seamless digital data workflows.
Key Objective 4: Foster cultural and digital change within the chemistry community in Germany to create awareness for and foster a community-agreed technically reliable RDM infrastructure for all levels of academia, beginning in undergraduate studies curricula.
Key Objective 5: Collaborate with other consortia and promote cross-cutting developments to extend synergies within OneNFDI and enable interdisciplinary data harmonisation and integration.
Key Objective 6: Facilitate data reuse and enable AI in chemistry by providing AI-ready data, data infrastructures, and high-quality data and metadata through all services.
These key objectives align with the overarching goals of the NFDI. For long-term commitment and the trust of the chemistry community, statements on the long-term availability of the NFDI4Chem infrastructure are imperative. Key players of the consortium are, in alignment with their strategic vision, willing to commit to the long-term provision of repositories and services, which nonetheless require reliable, additional funding.
NFDI4Chem recognises its role in the consolidation of the NFDI. The entanglement of our own services with basic services, exemplified by the terminology service, demonstrates our commitment to the consolidation process. We continue to contribute to the cross-cutting topics of the NFDI and metadata standardisation efforts. Our services are tailored to meet the needs of our community. We will continue our strategy and conduct in-depth community surveys regularly. We have adapted the DFG datasheet and the defined key performance indicators to monitor our services and community impact. We will identify further KPIs relevant to NFDI4Chem and embed these in the organisational structure and operations in the second funding phase to evaluate our success. A critical assessment of the KPIs will be conducted as part of the annual consortium meeting. We will participate in the NFDI TF Evaluation & Reporting for the overarching development of NFDI-wide KPIs and utilise recommendations from the NFDI.
