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. So, let us dive right in.

eLabFTW

Using the eLabFTW-API

Deltablot, the company behind eLabFTW (the electronic lab notebook), published a recording of a workshop by Moustapha Camara on the usage of the eLabFTW-API. Flagging this for all people involved in eLabFTW: Are you an RDM professional? Then you probably should add this to your resources and share the information with your researchers. Are you a researcher using eLabFTW? This workshop can help you level up your eLabFTW game. The great thing is that there is not only the recording but also a Jupyter notebook provided, which makes it easy for everyone to follow. You should check it out; it is a great resource.

Link to more information on the Jupyter notebook on GitHub

FAIRmat

A quick update: The FAIRmat newsletter

The latest FAIRmat newsletter is there. As always with newsletters, I will not cover all the information in there (to keep the News Digest actually short), but I will highlight a few things. First of all, if you need a commercial service for hosting NOMAD (or support with NOMAD), then GlAIde data GmbH has got you covered. In addition, I want to recommend the sections “Meet our users” with an interview with Sathya Sai Seetharaman and “Meet our experts” with an interview with Sarthak Kapoor. Quick read, great insights into the work of FAIRmat.

Link to the FAIRmat newsletter on the FAIRmat webpage

Data handling in NOMAD

Curious about the data handling in NOMAD? Check out the social media series “Where’s the Data in NOMAD” on the LinkedIn profile of FAIRmat. In short videos you learn what data handling in NOMAD looks like. Read more about it on the news page on NOMAD and check out their LinkedIn profile.

Link to news page on the FAIRmat webpage

NFDI4Cat

The next step for LinkML

The next update is for all the experts in modeling languages. LinkML moved from a cookiecutter-based template to a copier-based template. One reason is user feedback; it was just too complicated. Learn more about it by checking out the slides of a recent talk by David Linke in Zenodo, and if you are not familiar with LinkML check out the LinkML documentation.

Link to presentation in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18704589
Link to LinkML documentation at linkml.io

NFDI4Chem

Community & training

Interested to learn more about the plans of NFDI4Chem regarding community management as well as trainings and providing teaching materials? Then take a look at the latest report about the TA5 retreat of NFDI4Chem. TA5 is the task area that is focusing on Community & Training. If you are looking for some chemistry-specific teaching materials, you should keep your eyes open. There will be some new Open Educational Resources (OER) published in the near future.

Link to the article on the NFDI4Chem webpage

NFDI4Earth

Handling multi-source geospatial time series data

Handling and publishing 4D data can be messy. The pilot project 4D-WORKS of NFDI4Earth now supports researchers (and RDM professionals) with a metadata management framework for topographic 4D datasets. It is a machine-readable, interoperable schema designed specifically for multi-source topographic 4D datasets. For more information, check out the report by Jiapan Wang et al. in Zenodo.

Link to report in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17867923

PSDI

Well, this is simple. You work in life sciences or are an RDM professional? Then this recording is a must-watch. Robert Andrews provides an overview of multiple things that support RDM people with their work by ELIXIR. There are links to valuable resources, tools, information, and much more. Just to highlight two here: the online course “FAIR Pointers” and the project BioFAIR, a BioCommons infrastructure for UK life science researchers, and there is much more in the talk. Worth your time, check it out.

Link to the online course “FAIR Pointers”

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.