News Digest – RDM in Natural Science: Week 05, 2025
Zenodo updates
A presentation on a portal making X-ray absorption spectra from around the world findable was published, as well as a new version of the Training-catalogue for the Photon and Neutron Data Services. Both of these services are new to me, but you should definitely check them out if you are working in the field. The collection of training materials looks really good.
Truly FAIR Service for the International XAS Community: A Materials Overview through IXDB [Presentation]
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14778590
Training-catalogue for the Photon and Neutron Data Services [Software]
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14748997
Newsletter
Volume 6 of the FAIRmat newsletter was published, and as always with newsletters, I will not cover everything here in the News Digest, it would just be to long and a few things we already covered during the past weeks, but I want to highlight two things today:
The first thing is the article by Markus Scheidgen about NOMAD plugins. During the last few weeks we saw that there were many updates to NOMAD plugins and in the newsletter you now can read what it is all about: making NOMAD more customizable.
The second thing I would like to highlight is the NOMAD user interview with Lena Mittmann as well as the comment by Hampus Näsström. I think it shows quite well how the introduction of a research data management tool can work, that it takes time, and how RDM experts can support researchers. You can check out the newsletter here:
https://www.fairmat-nfdi.eu/uploads/documents/Newsletter/FAIRmat_Newsletter_6_31Jan25.pdf
Zenodo updates
New version of NOMAD plugins and parsers were added, to enhance the usability of NOMAD.
NOMAD Material Processing Plugin [Software]
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14771057
Electronic Parsers [Software]
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14762129
Atomistic Parsers [Software]
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14762049
Making it easier to find the right ELN
In a collaboration between NFDI4Chem and the ELN-Finder team, the search for the right ELN in chemistry has got a little bit easier. ELN-Finder is a tool that has (at the moment) information about 44 different electronic lab notebooks (ELNs), which you can filter by various properties and features. This allows users to faster find ELNs that could be useful for their research. In the new collaboration, new filters for different disciplines in chemistry were added. In addition, you now can find overviews of possible ELNs in the discipline-specific areas of the Knowledge Base of NFDI4Chem. Read the full article about the collaboration here:
https://www.nfdi4chem.de/make-it-easier-to-find-the-right-eln/
Videos for Training Courses
As in the past two weeks, more and more videos, which belong to the NFDI4Earth training courses, are made available on YouTube. Check out the latest additions on their channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMEHbJR6bDI&list=PLl0Z002DBG8mle7kkTTdrcqcfpMixsHlj
Zenodo updates
Quite a lot has happened in the Zenodo Community of NFDI4Earth in the last week, so here just one highlight, check the list below for more: A report on SoilPulse a project with the goal to make soil process data FAIR. To help researchers with the proposed five-step workflow, a python package called soilpulsecore is provided. Very interesting and helpful for scientists in the field, so definitely worth checking out.
SoilPulse – Tools to FAIRify Soil Process Data [Report]
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13911635
v1.0.0: CAPICE compute backend [Software]
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14538086
CAPICE Greenland Example [Software]
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14538166
v1.0.0: CAPICE Data Backend Module [Software]
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14538123
Towards model-to-measurement data cubes with rigorous uncertainty propagation [Report]
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14627370
Outro
So that is it for today. Thanks for reading, and see you next week. Do you have any questions or remarks? You are welcome to contact me (or write it in the comments) at any time.
Benjamin
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My name is Dr. Benjamin Golub-Overbeck, and I offer training and consulting services in research data management, particularly for the natural and life sciences. Are you unsure about your research data management practices? Do you want to stay updated on the latest developments or explore new workflows, such as implementing an electronic lab notebook? Or do you just need an introduction to FAIR data management?
With The FAIR Elephant, I can help you find tailored solutions to meet your needs. Contact me at thefairelephant@posteo.de—because your data deserves it!