Standards and practices: Developed in a participatory and collaborative approach and documented in the NFDI4Objects Commons
The overarching objectives of NFDI4Objects formulated in the proposal include
- to implement, align and expand standards
- to assure collaborative governance and sustainability
With these objectives, the consortium is addressing one of the most significant results of the pre-application survey in the community:
In a free text field, wishes could be expressed as to which challenges in research data management should be solved as a matter of priority. The evaluation, which was categorised, resulted in one priority by a wide margin:
Standards (frequency > 60%)
NFDI4Objects has established clear rules and processes for the joint and community-driven definition of standards. The results of these activities, which are supported by the consortium and always organised transparently, are compiled in the NFDI4Objects Commons.
The term commons
The term commons refers to resources (in the digital environment code, data and knowledge) ‘that emerge from self-organised processes of joint needs-oriented production, management, maintenance and/or use (commoning)’.
The German-language term for commons would be Wissens-Allmende; however, it is not frequently used, which is why we also use the English-language term in German. The commons are therefore a collection and aggregation of the knowledge collected and generated in NFDI4Objects. They are accessed via a catalogue that can be read by both humans and machines. This catalogue refers to persistent URLs in the repositories where the documents are permanently stored.
Building of the Commons
During the initial consortium phase, the Commons are preceded by an Incubator, in which existing materials are collected to support the development of the Commons.
The Commons thus offer constantly updated access to the results of the consortium’s work. On the way from a proposal to a component of the Commons, the resources undergo a participatory and collaborative process of standardisation in which the Community Clusters and Temporary Working Groups play a central role. The knowledge of the community is thus transferred to the standards of the consortium.
The Commons are therefore a central building block for the work of the consortium. They represent the proposals, recommendations and standards of our community and thus document best practices, technical descriptions, open teaching and learning materials and recommendations for the development of services.
All resources documented in the Commons are living documents and datasets that can be updated through codified, participatory and collaborative processes.