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.

NFDI4Chem

Data handling in a modular photoreactor concept

The FAIR4Chem Award 2025, by NFDI4Chem, was awarded to Daniel Kowalczyk from Ulm University for a dataset describing a modular photoreactor concept. I mentioned this already in August 2025, but now a recording of a talk at the NFDI4Chem Stammtisch was uploaded to the NFDI4Chem YouTube channel, where Daniel Kowalczyk provides detailed insides into the project, the documentation and the efforts to make the data FAIR. You can also learn more about the measures Ulm University takes to introduce the topic research data management (RDM) in their teaching, by utilising electronic lab notebooks like Chemotion ELN and eLabFTW. This video is worth your time if you want to see RDM in use. Maybe also a good example to add to our workshop materials. Check out the video right here. I also linked an article of the interview with the awardee from August 2025 as well as the “Hall of Fame” of NFDI4Chem where you can learn more about all the past FAIR4Chem Awardees.

Link to the interview with Daniel Kowalczyk from August 2025 on nfdi4chem.de
Link to the “Hall of Fame” of FAIR4Chem awardees at nfdi4chem.de

Software updates

FAIRmat

NOMAD Measurements Plugin: v1.3.5 (now with a basic Bruker RAW file parsing)
Link to release notes on GitHub
Link to software in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18174119

NFDI4Cat

nfdi4cat/voc4cat-tool: v1.0.1
Link to release notes on GitHub
Link to software in Zenodo with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18163010

Outro

That is it for today. Thanks for reading, and see you next week.

Benjamin

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