Speaker
Description
Data management plans (DMPs) are an essential component of the modern research data life cycle and are increasingly mandatory for German and EU funding calls. DMP services were therefore identified as a cornerstone element for FAIRagro, the NFDI consortium for agricultural systems sciences [1]. Thanks to the existing expertise within the FAIRagro co-applicant institutions, the decision was made to provide the ‘Research Data Management Organiser’ (RDMO) as a tool for the guided creation and maintenance of data management plans, together with templates specific to agricultural system sciences. When the DMP4NFDI base service was launched, FAIRagro decided to cooperate with this base service for hosting, rather than maintaining its own instance, leading to cooperation that spanned multiple incubator projects. This talk will present the different incubator projects and how FAIRagro and DMP4NFDI benefit from the collaboration.
In the first incubator project, DMP4NFDI set up an RDMO client for FAIRagro, reducing operational burdens, and easing improved interoperability with other NFDI consortia and the broader RDMO community. The DMP4NFDI team provided a ready‑to‑use RDMO test and productive client that enabled FAIRagro to test out the service in a cooperation, with the Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry, implementing a dedicated template for their funding calls [2].
Originally, FAIRagro worked on an agriculture-specific template based on the RDMO pre-defined DFG Checklist, but decided in a second incubator project to align these efforts with the Template Framework [3], developed by DMP4NFDI, linking the template to the RDA DMP common standard for machine-actionable data management [4]. This further increases interoperability across consortia and institutional RDMO developments that are also building on the Template Framework. Within this incubator project, answer options and help texts of the template were adapted for the agrosystem domains, and links to relevant FAIRagro resources and services were provided. For example, users can now directly contact the FAIRagro Helpdesk if they require support or more information on a question asked within RDMO.
Finally, to promote the template and gather feedback, FAIRagro also participated in a third incubator project focused on community outreach. DMP4NFDI supported this by organizing a workshop, where participants could create their own DMP for their project, section by section. Their feedback will be used to further improve the FAIRagro template.
Besides these actions, FAIRagro is also a use case in an incubator project between DMP4NFDI and TS4NFDI, to identify template questions where predefined terminologies enhance the template’s interoperability and reusability, showcasing a cooperation between multiple base services and their application for a consortium.
[1] Specka X, Martini D, Weiland C, et al. FAIRagro: Ein Konsortium in der Nationalen Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI) für Forschungsdaten in der Agrosystemforschung. Inform Spektrum 2023;46:24–35. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00287-022-01520-w.
[2] FAIRagro and the bavarian StMELF – a story about cultural change in RDM | NFDI n.d. https://www.nfdi.de/fairagro-and-the-bavarian-stmelf-a-story-about-cultural-change-in-rdm/?lang=en (accessed July 29, 2026).
[3] Schönau S, Windeck J, Gonzalez Ocanto M, et al. The NFDI DMP Template Framework 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16737079.
[4] Miksa T, Walk P, Neish P. RDA DMP Common Standard for Machine-actionable Data Management Plans 2020. https://doi.org/10.15497/rda00039.
| background | FAIRagro (consortium) |
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