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. Let us dive right in.
DAPHNE4NFDI
Source code for training catalogue published
The upgraded source code for the Photon and Neutron Training Catalogue was published by Martin Voigt et al. in Zenodo. In the catalogue over 400 materials are referenced for topics like python and FAIR data. The catalogue is based on the TeSS Training Catalogue by ELIXIR.
Link to the software in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22704536
Link to the PaN Training Catalogue
eLabFTW
Version 6.0.0 is out
With the version 6 a major update of the electronic lab notebook (ELN) eLabFTW was published. With this update breaking changes are introduced into the ELN, this is very important for all the sysadmins out there. Before you update to version 6, please check out the release notes and the documentation for the updating process. With the new version, there are of course some fixes and new features, which you can read more about in the blog post by Deltablot. One thing I am looking forward to testing, is the new offline application, which allows working offline.
Link to the blog post by Deltablot
Link to the release notes on GitHub
Link to the documentation for upgrading in the eLabFTW documentaiton
NFDI4Earth
Accessibility of governmental data
In the report Astrid Ziemann et al. investigate "three key questions: how governmental agencies can improve the publication and description of datasets; how ESS researchers can effectively find and access them; and what is needed for a sustainable, end-to-end data pipeline". The first report was published in 2025, this is now an updates version from August 2026. If you are working in the field or are interested how the topic governmental data, and how to handle these I highly recommend checking out this updated version.
Link to the report in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22702228
Overview of data storage and analysis solutions for large gridded data
Felix Cremer et al. published an update to their report on the state-of-the-art for data cube (and other) technologies relevant for the Earth System Sciences. The overview was first published in 2023 and gets an annual update. For all the people working in the field this is a great collection of software and cloud solutions but also provided information on data formats and databases.
Link to the report in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22711426
PSDI
Repository for kinetic mechanism data
The next recording in the "From Project to Platform" series of PSDI is out. This time it is about an open access repository for reaction kinetic mechanisms within the PSDI infrastructure. The repository is called ORKiM (Open access Repository for Kinetic Mechanisms). So check out talk by Sergio Vernuccio to learn more about it. At minute 21 of the recording you get a view insight the repository (see video below).
Link to the article on the PSDI webpage
PUNCH4NFDI
Recommendations for Citizen Science
A very interesting upload by Victoria Tokareva et al. discussing the possibility to engage with the public through Citizen Science and provide information how to participate in Citizen Science project and start one yourself. Definitely a topic not discussed very often here; therefore I recommend checking it out. Maybe your projects could benefit from it.
Link to the presentation in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22661291
RSpace
Office Hours: Connecting with the community
The latest session of the Office Hours of RSpace took place last week, and you can find the slides and notes from the meeting in their GitHub documentation. The Office Hours is a regular meeting, where the core team of RSpace engages with the community. Everybody is welcome there, independent of the knowledge and skill with RSpace. Unfortunately, I couldn't join the meetings in the past, but very much looking forward to joining them live in a future Office Hour.
Link to the Office Hour documentation on GitHub
Outro
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