In a joint document that is also signed by Achim Menges, Director of the IntCDC, major German research associations emphasise the importance of research data and software for their research processes. In the declaration, which was published in the journal “Bausteine Forschungsdatenmanagement” on 14 March 2022, the participating institutions commit themselves to support their researchers as a consortium in handling data and software in accordance with the FAIR principles in agreement with the code “Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice” of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and to use and provide adequate research data management tools and services for this purpose. The foundation for the joint document was laid during the virtual strategy workshop “Data and Software Management in Large Research Collaborations” in April 2021, which was organised by the two Clusters of Excellence SimTech and IntCDC at the University of Stuttgart. The spokespersons of the research alliances wrote the final text and clarified the purpose of the commitment:
- With the commitment, the signatory research alliances are signalling that they recognise the importance of research data management (RDM) and are taking measures to meet this importance.
- The commitment shows that the research alliances will contribute their competence in the topic and want to actively shape the future of RDM together with explicit RDM initiatives such as the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) or the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
- In a recent DFG impulse paper with recommendations for the recently started legislative period of the Bundestag, the topic is given high priority with the impulse “Shaping research data management for long-term sustainability”. The DFG funding programme “Information Infrastructures for Research Data” was also recently updated. The commitment signals that the research alliances support these current developments and can act as research nuclei for more far-reaching initiatives.
Further information can be found here.