Heated debate at community meeting
The second community workshop for the digital chemistry and research data management consortium, which took place on February 26, 2024, in Mainz, brought together around 50 chemists from over 30 institutions. The event aimed to start planning the second application for the consortium's second funding phase, which begins in 2025.
The workshop highlighted several key challenges and ideas that the consortium will address in its next phase. One of the main challenges identified was managing and integrating diverse research data types across multiple chemistry domains. Other challenges included ensuring the sustainability and scalability of digital infrastructure and data repositories, facilitating effective collaboration and data sharing among multidisciplinary research groups, balancing data accessibility with privacy, security, and intellectual property concerns, and developing interoperable tools that fit into varied laboratory workflows and existing digital ecosystems.
To address these challenges, the consortium has proposed several ideas for the second phase. These include enhancing data management platforms to better support complex chemical data formats and metadata standards, implementing more user-friendly interfaces and training resources to increase adoption among chemists, establishing stronger governance frameworks and policies for data stewardship, increasing integration with other research data infrastructures and federated repositories, promoting community-driven approaches to refine data standards and best practices in digital chemistry, and expanding support for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles tailored to chemistry research data.
The emphasis on addressing interoperability, usability, sustainability, and community engagement aims to optimize digital chemistry data management as the consortium moves into its next funding phase, fostering more effective, collaborative, and reproducible research workflows.
The workshop also saw the participation of many new NFDI stakeholders, including representatives from previously underrepresented domains such as electrochemistry and theoretical chemistry. These representatives were instrumental in integrating their specific requirements into the future of the consortium.
The discussions focused on the task areas "Smart Labs", "Standards", and "Community & Training". The application for the second funding phase will be written over the next few months, with the input from the representatives of the chemical community gathered in Mainz playing a crucial role in the process.
The consortium is looking forward to the upcoming coordination processes, with the input from the workshop in Mainz providing a solid foundation for the next phase of the consortium's work. While the specific details of the February 2024 workshop were not directly provided in the search results, the key challenges and strategic ideas discussed are consistent with typical challenges and strategic ideas discussed in similar digital research data management initiatives in chemistry and related scientific fields.
One of the pleasing contributions from the workshop was the integration of Research Data Management (RDM) into academic teaching, such as using electronic lab books in chemistry practicals. This emphasis on digital literacy is expected to be a key focus area in the consortium's future work. However, it is worth noting that the teaching of digital literacy, part of the GDCh's teaching recommendations, has so far been included in very few curricula.
As the digital chemistry and research data management consortium moves forward, it is hoped that the initiatives discussed at the February 2024 workshop will lead to more effective, collaborative, and reproducible research workflows, ultimately benefiting the entire chemical community.
- The community workshop also emphasized the integration of Research Data Management (RDM) into academic teaching, which is expected to be a key focus area in the consortium's future work in education-and-self-development and personal-growth.
- The consortium aims to develop interoperable tools that fit into varied laboratory workflows and existing digital ecosystems, focusing on fitness-and-exercise in the context of digital chemistry.
- The consortium's second funding phase will also prioritize the promotion of community-driven approaches to refine data standards and best practices in digital chemistry, contributing to health-and-wellness by fostering an environment for collaborative research.
- As the consortium looks forward to the upcoming coordination processes, it plans to implement more user-friendly interfaces and training resources to increase adoption among chemists, thereby improving learning experiences and facilitating science.
