The NFDI4Ing BASE SERVICES.
Developing and maintaining RDM services
base services concept
The task area base services, bundles all basic NFDI4Ing RDM services – both existing and those in development. As such, it provides central services for the archetype task areas in order to address their specific requirements. In the same spirit, the task area is in close contact with the Community Clusters to pick up on requirements and needs of the larger engineering community. The base services are designed to support the strong interdependencies between different measures and to foster a development mentality focussed on interlocking and consolidating efforts between individual NFDI4Ing partners. Each measure is worked on by multiple partner institutions with a defined lead. Each staff member of the task area participates in at least two measures to support and further develop a holistic view on the service portfolio.
key objectives
NFDI4Ing builds all of its services in a modular and user-centred style. The key objective of the task area Base Services is to further develop and scale solutions provided by the archetypes and supply specific services and tools for internal and external partners. Initially, we have identified seven service objectives that are relevant for all engineering archetypes and communities and thus form the individual measures of the task area Base Services:
Quality Assurance & Metrics (S-1)
All archetypes and communities rely on data quality assurance processes, the respective tools, and data quality metrics to make their data FAIR and to enable engineers to appraise and select data for further curation (measure S-1).
Research Software Development (S-2)
Metadata & Terminology Services (S-3)
Providing easy-to-use yet comprehensible metadata tools for the engineering research daily routine as well as establishing detailed terminologies for engineering are the common ground for all RDM processes (measure S-3);
Repositories & Storage (S-4)
The safe and secure storage and long-term archiving of data as well as the possibility to share or publish data in suitable repositories is relevant to all archetypes and communities, yet in varying shape (measure S-4).
NFDI Software Architecture (S-5)
All NFDI4Ing services participate in are part of an overall software architecture incl. authentication, authorisation, and role management schemes, which is absolutely necessary for confident data from research projects close to industry (measure S-5);
Community-based Training (S-6)
Scientists of all disciplines are able to retrace or reproduce all steps of engineering research processes. This ensures the trustworthiness of published results, prevents redundancies, and contributes to social acceptance.
Automated Data & Knowledge Discovery (S-7)
All NFDI4Ing services are designed as open, modular, and standardised as possible, in order to foster crossconsortial reusability. Furthermore, we strive for technical and structural connectivity to parallel and prospective developments in RDM on the national and international level (e.g. in the EOSC).