To strengthen collaboration in research data management (RDM), NFDI4Energy has recently signed several Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with other NFDI consortia. These collaborations aim to connect expertise, harmonize approaches, and improve interoperability between service ecosystems.
What is an MoU?
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is a formal agreement between partners that defines shared goals and areas of collaboration. Within the NFDI context, MoUs support cooperation between consortia and foster joint activities in research data management.
Signed MoUs
NFDI4Energy has signed MoUs with the following three NFDI Consortia:
1. NFDI4Ing
The MoU between NFDI4ING and NFDI4Energy focuses on collaboration between engineering sciences and energy research. While NFDI4ING contributes methodological expertise in engineering research data management, NFDI4Energy contributes expertise from the energy research domain.
The cooperation includes:
- mutual participation in meetings and conferences,
- helpdesk cooperation,
- joint training activities and teaching data literacy,
- joint cross-consortial use cases,
- opening services for the respective partner community,
- joint service development,
- and the joint development of metadata profiles and ontologies.
In addition, both consortia collaborate on interoperability between repositories and services, including RDMO, ORKG, the Terminology Service, and AI-assisted workflows for research data management.
2. KonsortSWD
The MoU between KonsortSWD and NFDI4Energy focuses on social science in energy research from two perspectives. While KonsortSWD contributes expertise in research data management methods and FAIR-compliant access to sensitive data, NFDI4Energy contributes expertise from the energy research domain.
The collaboration includes:
- mutual participation in meetings and conferences,
- cooperation between helpdesks and training activities,
- joint cross-consortia use cases,
- integration of services into service portfolios,
- and harmonization of data and metadata standards where relevant to both consortia.
In addition, both consortia plan to collaborate on enabling a research data center (RDC) for social energy research.
3. NFDI-MatWerk
The MoU between NFDI-MatWerk and NFDI4Energy focuses on collaboration between materials science, engineering, and energy research. While NFDI-MatWerk contributes methodological expertise in materials science and engineering, NFDI4Energy contributes expertise from the energy research domain.
The collaboration aims to jointly advance research data management, improve interoperability between service ecosystems, and open up relevant data resources for both communities.
The cooperation includes:
- mutual participation in meetings and conferences,
- helpdesk cooperation,
- joint cross-consortial use cases,
- opening services for the respective partner community,
- and strengthening semantic interoperability through shared metadata profiles, vocabularies, ontologies, and persistent identifiers.
In this context, both consortia continue and expand their existing cross-consortial use case on synthetic data in materials and energy research. The collaboration also includes the usage of the electronic lab notebook eLabFTW for the NFDI4Energy community.
Further Information
The published Memoranda of Understanding with NFDI4ING, KonsortSWD, and NFDI-MatWerk can be accessed via the corresponding Zenodo records: