Welcome to the News Digest – RDM in Natural Science. Each week, I explore the latest developments in research data management, focusing specifically on natural sciences, and provide a concise overview. Today is fully packed, so let us dive right in.

DAPHNE4NFDI

Understanding user needs – TA2 (Meta)Data Repositories and Catalogues Meeting

The Task Area 2 of DAPHNE4NFDI, which is focusing on repositories and catalogues, had their annual meeting at the end of January. This time they put the user requirements at the centre of the meeting. You can find a report on the meeting on the webpage of DAPHNE4NFDI. Very interesting is also a linked article by Christine L. Borgman and Paul Groth discussing the concept of Dimensions of Distance Between Data Creators and Data Reusers.

Link to article on the DAPHNE4NFDI webpage

NFDI4Chem

OER on data management plans

You are giving workshops regarding research data management and are constantly looking for new material? Then you should check this newly published materials by Ann-Christin Andres et al.: In January 2026 NFDI4Chem gave a workshop regarding data management plans (DMPs) and they published the workshop materials as Open Education Resource (OER) in Zenodo. In the material you will not only find information about DMPs but also on basics in research data management. NFDI4Chem is not only providing the slides of the workshop but also speaker notes and the concept. Everything published under CC0, so definitely a source worth checking out.

Link to OER material in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18349878

Validation of molecular structures

For chemists, the structure of a molecule is probably one of the most important things. With the help of SMILES, InChI and many other tools, we can translate the drawing of a structure into a string or other non-graphical representation of the molecule. This enables us to efficiently search in databases and store molecule information. Unfortunately, the conversion into these non-graphical representations of a molecule can be tricky. In the latest article by NFDI4Chem they highlight a molecule validation tool, where you can provide a chemical structure as SMILES, InChI or and many other formats, and the tool is validating the structure as well as provide you with a preview of the structure (since many chemists are quite visual). Great tool, definitely check it out and recommend it to your researchers, maybe even something that could potentially be included in electronic lab notebooks and so on. Read more about it on the webpage of NFDI4Chem.

Link to article on the NFDI4Chem webpage

Reflections on 2025 and more the Distillate of RSC-CICAG

In the latest “Distillate” (similar to a newsletter) of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Interest Group Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group (RSC-CICAG), NFDI4Chem published an article by Theo Bender et al. about their latest developments and provides a brief overview of the things that happened in 2025. If you followed this News Digest closely over the last year, there is probably not too much new information here, but it is nevertheless a great recap. And the whole issue of Distillate is actually quite informative, there is information about Ontologies4Chem, news from InChI as well as from CAS and much more. So definitely recommended to check it out. The article of NFDI4Chem can be found on page 39.

Link to the Distillate by RSC-CICAG

NFDI4Earth

A support network for the earth system sciences

One of the most powerful tools we have in research and research support is working together, combining expertise and using resources more efficiently. If you want to know how NFDI4Earth is building a support network for the earth system sciences, you should check out their recently published poster by Hela Mehrtens et al. and learn more about their ideas, workflows and challenges.

Link to the poster in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18431327

What is your target group?

When developing tools and services, it is important to know who your target group is, and to learn as much as possible about them. Keeping your target group and community in mind is key for successful change and implementation of RDM workflows. Ivonne Andres et al. have now published their extensive research on the target group and community of NFDI4Earth. Worth having a look and applying a similar thing to your projects.

Link to the report in Zendo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18551033

PSDI

PSDI has published three recordings of talks from a meeting in March 2025 to their YouTube-Channel, as always, there are worth your time.

Data stewards are the key – The CaSDaR Network+

Samantha Pearman-Kanza is back with another talk, this time presenting the CaSDaR (Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research). In the talk, Samantha is pointing out the importance of people in research data management (sometimes called data stewards). All the tools that are developed are great and very helpful, but we still need people with the know-how and passion to improve our data. Great talk and probably something we all (at least I) should emphasize more in our workshops, discussions with project leads and all the people able to make decisions.

Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF)

The second talk is by Simon Hodson and is discussing the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF). There is a lot of information in here, so buckle up and take out your pen and paper to make some notes.

Asses trustworthiness of research data repositories

In the third talk, Ian Bruno is addressing the trustworthiness of data repositories on the example of CSD (Cambridge Structural Database), discussing things like the Core Trust Seal and the TRUST Principles.  By the way, this is the first time I have come across the TRUST principles. I think I will add some of the information to my workshops.

PUNCH4NFDI

Improving data exploitation

For many large-scale infrastructures, data handling was developed and improved over the last few years, but what about the data exploitation? How can smaller groups and projects reuse data? For PUNCH4NFDI is clear, this needs to be improved. This is where the Science Data Platform comes into play. Learn more about it from a poster published by Harry Enke on Zenodo.

Link to poster in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18547835

Research Data Alliance (RDA)

Improving data findability

In the past years more and more data was published in repositories, which is a good thing, but according to Mingfang Wu et al. the data reuse and data discovery has not really improved. In their latest article in Data Science Journal, they provide insides on how to bridge the Data Discovery Gap, as they call it. Very interesting paper and I flag this for everyone who generally interested in the topic, but specifically people working on data repositories. There are many recommendations on how we can improve the situation. Here I want to highlight one: Recommendation 3.4: Implement robust metadata quality assurance. I strongly agree that this is something we need to improve right now. What do you think about the recommendations? Which one do you agree most with?

Link to the article in Data Science Journal with DOI: 10.5334/dsj-2026-006

Since the RDA is not regularly feature in this News Digest, here a link to the webpage in case you are not familiar with their good work.

Link to the RDA webpage

Software & workflows

NFDI4Cat

nfdi4cat/voc4cat-template: Release 26.2(workflow)
Link to release notes in GitHub
Link to workflow in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18643923

nfdi4cat/voc4cat-tool: Release 1.0.3 (software)
Link to release notes in GitHub
Link to software in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18643884

NFDI4Chem

A new version of LabIMotion is available with some new features and enhancements. If you are working with Chemotion ELN and/or LabIMotion you should definitely check this out.

LabIMotion Version 2.1.0
Link to release notes in GitHub
Link to software in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18537930

The FAIR Elephant

I want to use this chance to do some advertisement for the “WISSENSCHAFTLICH ARBEITEN – Der Onlinekongress” by Daniela Keller. It is a free, online event for students, Phd students and researchers who would like to improve their projects and methods. I am pleased to be part of the event and will provide an input regarding data organisation as foundation for good research. It would be great to see you there. You can check out the whole program on the event webpage, the registration is open now, and it will take place from March 23 to March 27. Just one remark, the whole event will be in German. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Link to the congress webpage.

Outro

Well, this was a fully packed News Digest. Thanks for reading, and see you next week.

Benjamin

If you find these weekly overviews useful, please like, and share them with your colleagues and if you want to support me even more, you can go over to my ko-fi page and buy a bag of peanuts for The FAIR Elephant. Your support is much appreciated.