Speaker
Description
How can I easily log in to my research data management platform? Is it possible to automatically create a project based on my data management plan? Which metadata terms best match my custom metadata profile to describe my research data? Fortunately, we found the answers to all three user questions of our research data management platform Coscine - thanks to our participation in four Base4NFDI incubators.
The main aim of Coscine is to create a coherent, FAIR workflow for research data management – from the beginning of a research project till its archiving. Since Coscines first broadcast at RWTH Aachen University, the usage has expanded throughout North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany and even beyond. To date, researchers of fifteen universities and two NFDI consortia (NFDI4ING and NFDI-MatWerk) use the platform to store their research data and associated metadata - often in collaboration with project members around the world. As the number of users has increased in recent years, so too have the demands placed on our platform - particularly regarding national interoperability with other services.
In our presentation we will illustrate our participation in incubators and other collaborations with the Base4NFDI Services around Coscine that improved our interoperability with other services - as a showcase for making use of the Base4NFDI service portfolio.
Thanks to the Base4NFDI service IAM4NFDI, Coscine could improve the authentication to the platform by participating in two incubators. The first incubator focused on adding an NFDI login infrastructure to our existing login options using the Community AAI of NFDI4ING. Building on this, the second incubator developed a proof-of-concept for virtual organizations - subgroups within the login infrastructure - that allow Coscine to automatically identify users as members of specific NFDI consortia and assign predefined rights and roles.
Additionally, the incubator with DMP4NFDI resulted in a seamless integration between RDMO and Coscine. Once researchers finalize their data management plans in RDMO, they can export them as JSON files, which Coscine then imports during project creation. This data exchange ensures reliable, consistent metadata across systems while reducing administrative overhead by automating the transfer of project-related information.
Finally, through an incubator with TS4NFDI, the metadata profile editor used in Coscine for metadata management underwent significant improvements. It is based on the AIMS Metadata Profile Service and enables the easy creation of custom metadata profiles. Researchers can use these metadata profiles in Coscine to annotate their research data. A new terminology search widget was added to facilitate the selection of appropriate metadata terms, providing users with detailed term information, the ability to switch between collections, and apply filters. This enhancement offers greater flexibility in selecting community-specific terminology, thereby supporting more precise and consistent metadata annotation by researchers.
Key outcomes of these incubators include improved authentication via NFDI-wide single sign-on, automated role assignment through virtual organizations, seamless data exchange between RDMO and Coscine, and enhanced metadata management through advanced terminology tools. In our presentation, we will also highlight other existing and planned future collaborations with Base4nfdi services, such as PID4NFDI, Jupyter4NFDI, Accounting4NFDI and KG4NFDI.
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