2025-12-02

Welcome to the 9th Base4NFDI newsletter!
Every two months we will share the latest updates about upcoming Base-relevant events and presentations, insights into the basic service development, and notify you about interesting resources to keep you informed and inspired. 
Thank you for your support this year and being part of our community. Wishing you a restful end of the year and a great start to the new one.

 Brief updates from the basic services

The next year’s deadlines for submitting basic service proposals have been set:

• Round 10: 28 January 2026
• Round 11: 22 April 2026
• Round 12: 22 July 2026

Brief updates from the basic services

• IAM4NFDI
  • The basic service proposal from IAM4NFDI has been accepted for funding of the Ramp-up Phase following the Consortia Assembly’s decision. The final phase for development will start in February 2026.
  • IAM4NFDI has published their next call for incubators. The next incubator cycle starts on February 1st, 2026. You can find the call here. Please note the submission deadline is January 7, 2026.

• TS4NFDI
  • TS4NFDI has published their Initialisation phase achievements. You can find the summary .
  • Save-the-date: 2nd TS4NFDI Community Workshop | 10.03.2026-12.03.2026.
  • TS4NFDI has published their [3rd Incubator call](https://base4nfdi.de/?view=article&id=163:ts4nfdi-call-for-incubator-projects-2026&catid=8). The submission deadline is due on 09.01.2026. The incubator cycle will start end of February/beginning of March.
  • The TS4NFDI explainer video is now published on [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT4YUTvqKRI).
• PID4NFDI
  • The knowledge base on PIDs for instruments is available now including a first best practice report and the the federated PID instruments search providing statistics on instruments registered with DOIs or ePIC handles.

• KGI4NFDI
  • The team has prepared the submission of their updated Integration phase proposal. The final decision will be made in the Consortia Assembly meeting in January 2026.

• DMP4NFDI
  • The call for incubators is open! To propose an incubator project, please complete the short application template outlining your goals, team, and expected outcomes, and submit the template by December 15. More information here.
  • The next Support Jour Fixe is today (Dec 2; regularly every first Tuesday of the month) 11-12 am. It primarily addresses (interested) incubators to discuss collaboration and issues. Check the agenda here.
  • If you are interested in improving RDMO, join our Christmas Mini Hackathon on Dec 11, 9.30–16h! Find the agenda here.

• Jupyter4NFDI
  • The entire team met in Stuttgart at the end of October to discuss next steps during the Integration phase. Particularly the upcoming calls for Incubator projects with interested user groups and resource providers as well as planned features for the time ahead.

• nfdi.software
  • nfdi.software received a cost neutral extension of their Initialisation phase until 31.12.2025.

• RDMTraining4NFDI
  • Base4NFDI approved a cost neutral extension of the Initialisation phase of RDMTraining4NFDI (TH Köln) until 30.04.2026.
  • RDMTraining4NFDI held its first stakeholder meeting with 67 participants. During the meeting, the RDM community provided feedback on opportunities and challenges for establishing a more coordinated approach to RDM training and discussed the concept of microcredentials with regard to its potential for certifying RDM competencies. The outcomes of the meeting will be published in the RDMTraining4NFDI Zenodo community.
  • RDMT4NFDI’s requirement analysis resulted in a content blueprint which will be published when reviewed by the use case consortia. Check the complementary design document: Combining community concepts for reusable RDM training materials, Zenodo.

• Accounting4NFDI
  • The basic service proposal from Accounting4NFDI has been accepted for funding of the Initialisation phase following the Consortia Assembly’s decision. The Initialisation phase will start in February 2026.

Collaborations

• RDMTraining & DMP4NFDI: collaboration to gather feedback from community on DMP self-learning module.

Publications and related materials

• 23 TrainingThings for AI-assisted instructional design, 13.10.2025. Zenodo.
• Building Sustainable Infrastructures: Lessons Learnt & Future Directions – Takeaways from a panel discussion, 14.10.2025. Zenodo.
• 5 Steps to Base4NFDI Service Integration – A Guide for NFDI Consortia, 03.11.2025. Zenodo.

Miscellaneous

• We are delighted to announce that next year's Base4NFDI User Conference (UC4B 2026) will be held in Berlin. Save the Date: 24.-25. November 2026 at Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Haus Potsdamer Straße. Stay tuned.

If you have any questions, please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

2025-11-26

DMP4NFDI is the basic service in development for data management planning within NFDI, funded and supported by the Base4NFDI initiative. The main objective of DMP4NFDI is to support NFDI consortia in developing and providing standardised and machine-actionable data and software management plan services. Data Management Plans (DMPs) and Software Management Plans (SMPs) are essential components of research data infrastructure, particularly in supporting FAIR, foresightful RDM and facilitating collaboration among all partners involved in research data management (RDM). While researchers often view DMPs primarily as supplements to grant proposals for research funding bodies, their potential extends far beyond this limited perspective.

During the initialisation phase, DMP4NFDI established a multi-tenant RDMO instance with community-specific, customisable clients for several consortia, with some already in productive use (NFDI4ING, NFDI4Chem, NFDI4Culture, FAIRagro) and others in testing environments (NFDI4Memory, NFDI4Earth, MaRDI) to prepare templates and plugins. For template development, we organised several workshops and exchange meetings with consortia and the broader RDM community to collect requirements and feedback, resulting in the publication of the first version of the NFDI DMP Template Framework. The framework ensures interoperability across consortia templates by defining a common vocabulary and supports consortia by providing a reusable and adaptable DMP template available in text form and as an RDMO catalog. We also supported consortia in developing customised RDMO plugins to connect RDMO directly to sensor databases (NFDI4Earth), Zenodo (NFDI4Biodiversity), and knowledge graphs (MaRDI). Completing the framework approach, we gathered requirements for DMP training and developed a train-the-trainer concept.

To prepare for the further integration of consortia during the next project phase and build on experiences from the initial integration use cases, we developed a service cooperation model that describes the responsibilities and collaboration mechanisms between consortia and DMP4NFDI, and which will iteratively be refined in the course of our collaborations.

During the integration phase, we will run regular calls for incubator projects to onboard new consortia. Each Project will typically focus on one aspect of a DMP service: hosting of RDMO, template development for DMPs or SMPs, service integration, or training and outreach activities. We will also incorporate SMPs into the template framework and improve interoperability by aligning it with international standards currently in development.