Overview of the availability of tools and services for early data mobilization

Status quo

In recent years, the availability of biodiversity data has improved considerably, which has led to an increasing demand for methods and tools for Early Data Mobilization. This term refers to the rapid and efficient processing and analysis of data to gain valuable knowledge and insights before the data is fully available. NFDI4Biodiversity aims to further improve the availability of such tools for early data mobilization and analysis to facilitate the creation of FAIR Data.

The focus lies on early data mobilization and should ultimately provide data which are collected/created /processed with tools that can seamlessly be integrated into the NFDI4Biodiversity’s Research Data Commons (RDC) platform. 

The RDC is conceptualised as an expandable, cloud-based research infrastructure that provides scientists, data providers, and data consumers with powerful tools for creating FAIR data products and facilitates the exchange of data and services in a collaborative manner, both within the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and beyond.

Therefore, NFDI4Biodiversity supports data providers (i.e.researchers and consortia participant facility that provides data or metadata to be distributed to data users) by

1. Creating awareness for existing tools which are better suited towards the above goals compared to spreadsheet software
2. Providing custom training and facilitating IT-support in tool development, deployment and use via the helpdesk 
3. Enabling direct, problem-specific tool development

The following community demands/needs regarding data mobilization will be addressed:

1. Gathering, structuring and managing raw data
2. Workflow realization
3. Quality control and plausibility assurance
4. Analyzation and modelling of data
5. Virtual research environments for networking and sharing
6. Data publication
7. Long-term archiving

Here, we aim at clarifying the status quo by providing an overview of existing tools which fulfil the above criteria and are as generic as possible yet as specific as necessary, to be applicable to a wide variety of users from different disciplines and remaining maintainable and interoperable. In addition to the tools, we will provide an overview of appropriate training modules.

 Services for Early Data Mobilization from NFDI4Biodiversity partners