Task Area 5 - NFDI4Culture

Technical, Ethical & Legal

Overarching technical, ethical and legal activities

Our main objective is to guarantee a permanent and comprehensive technical infrastructure for the entire consortium which is closely intertwined with the legal and data-ethical aspects. The manifold research data collections of material and immaterial cultural assets will be combined into an overarching knowledge graph. In addition, the tools and services NFDI4Culture consortium offers to the community will be connected and made available via the Culture web portal.

At the same time, diverse ethical and legal issues for researchers and institutions that provide, manage or use data are to be taken into account. Material and immaterial cultural assets are subject to specific and sometimes complex legal circumstances which they pass on to the digital data that has been generated from them. We will provide support to the research community in the present while working towards future legislation that will be better tailored to existing needs.

We offer information and clarification for researchers and institutions regarding data rights and ethical questions, such as copyright, property and personal rights (data protection), as well as treatment of culturally sensitive objects. We assist in keeping research data as open and easily accessible as possible and compliant with the FAIR principles and ethical guidelines by clarifying legal issues and reducing legal uncertainty.

Helpdesk

The legal team evaluates and analyses practical scenarios of research-driven data usage. It advises the NFDI4Culture consortium internally and formulates reports for legislators, public administration and governments both nationally and at the level of EU law. Our activities seek to raise awareness for the legal conditions and subsequent needs of researchers, authors and exploiters alike.

A stakeholder process will be initiated with data providers from inside and outside the cultural heritage domain. With the implementation of a Legal Helpdesk and the formation of a competence centre, NFDI4Culture works towards data accessibility and reusability in line with the FAIR principles.

The Culture Knowledge Graph aims to be a connector for all research data produced within the NFDI4Culture subject areas. This will enable overarching search functionality and access to the research data collections distributed internally, across the consortium and beyond. We will build this by using existing data in the Linked Open Data format as well as working with data providers to convert and integrate their digital assets. We will make use of W3C standard technologies and standard metadata formats that are already recognized by the Culture community. The underlying software is Wikibase.

NFDI4Culture offers a wide range of services by many different teams. We aim to make all those services easily accessible via one single point of contact that fulfills the needs of researchers, data providers, GLAM institutions and students alike Therefore, the Culture Information Portal is being continuously enhanced to integrate new services and information.

The Linked Open Data Working Group is a format to discuss linked open data within NFDI4Culture and help data providers prepare their data for integration into the Culture Knowledge Graph. It currently meets once a month to discuss various topics of interests, such as tools for linked open data, data modelling and new developments of the knowledge graph. To stay up to date on upcoming meetings, events and other developments, sign up for our mailing list here: https://lists.nfdi.de/postorius/lists/nfdi4culture-lod.lists.nfdi.de