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Free University of Berlin launches offensive for fair research data!
The Department of Geosciences at FU Berlin signs the NFDI4Earth Commitment for fair research data on March 26, 2025.
Free University of Berlin launches offensive for fair research data!
On March 26, 2025, the Department of Geosciences at the Free University of Berlin signed the NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment. This commitment aims to ensure fair and transparent handling of research data. The signing represents an important step in strengthening the commitment within the NFDI4Earth consortium, which consists of 65 universities, research institutions, infrastructure providers and scientific associations. This collaboration allows researchers to access a comprehensive collection of Earth system data as well as innovative methods in research data management and data science.
NFDI4Earth is a community-driven project that addresses the digital needs in research data management for Earth system sciences. The aim of the consortium is to promote understanding of the complex functioning and interactions within the Earth system and to address the challenges of global change. The geosciences are actively driving forward these developments and would like to develop concrete measures to achieve the agreed commitment goals in the coming years.
Dedicated professionals and new agreements
There are several committed people active within the Department of Geosciences, including Prof. Dr. Harry Becker, Dr. Ines Langer and Dr. Andreas Hübner, who works at the university library and geosciences library. Handling research data is not only a challenge, but also an integral part of the research culture in the department.
The working group led by Junior Professor Dr. María Piquer-Rodríguez developed new research data agreements in collaboration with the University Library and the Legal Office. These regulations define the handling of research data and the usage rights for students and scientists. An important aspect of these agreements is that the relevant documents are freely available online and can be adapted under the CC0 license.
FAIR principles in research data management
The principles of FAIR data management, which are also central to the NFDI4Earth project, are: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). These principles stipulate that research data must be prepared in such a way that it is discoverable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. To achieve this, appropriate measures must be taken during the conception and collection of data.
The requirements for the FAIR principles are clearly defined:
- Findable: Daten müssen mit entsprechenden Metadaten beschrieben und in Suchmaschinen indexiert sein, um die Auffindbarkeit zu gewährleisten.
- Accessible: Daten und deren Metadaten sollten über Programmierschnittstellen (APIs) zugänglich sein und klar gekennzeichnet werden, unter welchen Bedingungen auf sie zugegriffen werden kann.
- Interoperable: Die Daten müssen über offene Formate und Standards zur technischen Nachnutzbarkeit verfügen.
- Reusable: Die Daten sollen unter offenen Lizenzen veröffentlicht und fachlich anerkannte Standards beachten.
The NFDI4Earth engagement advances collaborative work to strengthen these principles and improve research data management, which is critical for future research in Earth system sciences.
The NFDI4Earth network, which works closely with the Earth System Science community, shows that promoting transparent and fair handling of research data is not only possible, but also necessary for innovative scientific work today.