Second NFDI metadata workshop in Hanover

A further step towards interoperable, cross-consortia research data management

From 25 to 27 June 2025, the 2nd workshop of the metadata section of the NFDI took place at the TIB in Hanover, in which our consortium also participated.

Entrance to the TIB, photo: Anja Gerber, CC-BY

The days were filled with interesting presentations on existing offerings and developments, plenty of time for group work, and discussions. This workshop was a big step towards interoperable, cross-consortia research data management with the central result that all consortia share the clear goal of making as much metadata available as possible. DataCite, DCAT and schema.org are suitable standards for core metadata and at least one of them can be used in every discipline. Initial drafts of an NFDI-wide metadata profile have been developed, including the assessment of metadata elements as mandatory, recommended or optional. The focus is on a common understanding of what the individual metadata elements should specifically contain, e.g. ORCID and ROR-IDs for authors, with simultaneous flexibility for titles and descriptions. The focus on discipline-specific, semantically rich metadata for data provenance was also important and could be discussed. Working groups jointly developed solutions to questions such as: What does the dataset describe? Which variables are included? How can these be best structured?

Slide on the next steps, photo: Anja Gerber, CC-BY

Thank you for the opportunity to exchange ideas across consortia!