Plenary Conference Proceedings | 18. December 2025

CCP 5: “Shared Data – Shared Practice – Shared Knowledge” and the Voices of the Community

By Zahia Schlott, M. A.

For the fifth time, NFDI4Culture held it’s Community Plenary – the consortium's largest annual gathering –  in person, from September 24th to 26th 2025, at the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz. Discussions focused particularly on the key topic of “data sovereignty, infrastructural resilience, and scientific freedom”, but also covered the current status, results of the work programme, and the consortium's strategy for the future.

This chronological and thematic report provides detailed information about the three day conference. It may be read selectively or in its entirety, and includes many authentic voices and quotes from plenary participants from the NFDI4Culture community.

Above all, the approximately 100 participants – representatives of member institutions, consortium staff and visitors from the (inter)national research and digital infrastructure communities – finally had the opportunity to meet in person (again). In a large and predominantly digital project such as NFDI4Culture, the get-together noticeably strengthened the network of the highly diverse community and reinforced the shared motivation and passion for research data management in the field of cultural data. Even European visitors and interested parties travelled to the Community Plenary to participate in NFDI4Culture and exchange ideas. Amongst them was Rafael Uriarte, Ph.D., from the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, who shared his motivations in a short interview:

“I came here to see what kind of contribution we can make and how to convince people to open their data, especially in art history.”

Those who were unable to make it to Mainz in person had the opportunity to participate virtually in the main programme.

Day 1 of the Conference: Workshop Wednesday, Helpdesk Speed Dating and DigAMus Award

Research Data Management Workshops and Helpdesk Speed Dating

One of the programme's special highlights was its attractive range of workshops: In a relaxed and collegial atmosphere, participants were able to develop new skills, explore new tools and techniques, and expand their practical abilities. Topics covered included Python programming, knowledge graphs, and sustainability in research data management. The ‘Data Stories’ workshop proved particularly popular. Participant Thomas Kollatz (Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz) later commented:

“We made tremendous progress in the workshop in turning our data into a vivid story.”

At the same time, the NFDI4Culture Helpdesk team offered speed-dating consultations to plenary participants on all matters relating to research data. Jun.-Prof. Dennis Ried (University of Halle-Wittenberg) took advantage of this service:

“Consulting people familiar with funding structures was extremely valuable for me, as it helped me to sort through ideas.”

Helpdesk employee Dr Grischka Petri sums things up: 

“The consultations were quite comprehensive and also included some densely packed, sometimes very specific information sessions. Of course, we can’t solve everything in half an hour, but we were able to open doors and provide guidance on next steps.”

Presenting the DigAMus Award for Outstanding Digital Projects in the Cultural Sector

The festive evening event provided an opportunity to don elegant evening wear. The GLAMorous DigAMus Award ceremony, which honours outstanding digital projects in the cultural sector, took place for the first time as part of the NFDI4Culture Community Plenary. For the occasion, the DigAMus Award organising team dressed entirely in gold and silver. Alongside the golden award statuettes, they added a touch of Oscar flair to the event.

In keeping with tradition at the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, a gong strike marked the start of the award ceremony, inviting the on-site participants to the plenary hall. In addition to the live event, online participation was also offered. The sophisticated implementation of the hybrid event was widely praised: The combination of technology (Zoom stream) and live event on site provided an entertaining mix of live performances, video clips and online participation, engaging viewers from near and far.

Following the introduction of the shortlisted projects, the DigAMus Award was presented in six categories. The winning projects received lots of applause and cheers from the audience. The ‘Five Guides’ from the TikTok channel @five.guides of the LWL Museum of Archaeology and Culture, the winners of the category ‘Contemporary Communication’, were particularly infectious in their joy, which filled the entire room. It was evident that the guides are passionate about offering young people access to culture and museums on an equal footing. After the ceremony, project participant Marie Jakob said,

“A lot of work went into the project. So the award is a great confirmation that we struck a chord and did a good job.”

The audience award, which 1,500 people had cast their votes for, went to the museum podcast ‘Auf die Ohren’ (On Your Ears) by the Egyptian Museum on Ancient Egyptian Cultural History in Munich. The winners, Roxane Bicker and Nora Heil, who had joined in the ceremony online, said they were 'surprised and unprepared', adding:

“Now we really have something to celebrate at our team gathering!”

Johannes Sauter, a member of the DigAMus Award team, who had come all the way from Bern for the occasion, talked aboutthe the cooperation between NFDI4Culture and the DigAMus Award:

“There is so much data from the submitted projects – we want to make this data available to the community.”

NFDI4Culture provides support, particularly with regard to data quality and structure, for the data transfer to Wikidata.

“Wikidata is not just a by-product. The award itself is important, of course, and helps to raise awareness, but the main value lies in the data. We hope that our collaboration with NFDI4Culture will encourage the community to adopt and utilise this curated data,” he added. “It was great to be an official part of the programme at the NFDI4Culture Community Plenary. We were so well received here, by both the organisers and the audience. It's a very open and dynamic community that's really keen to get things done!”

His colleague Sonja Thiel, who joined the meeting virtually from the USA, confirmed that it was the cooperation that made the DigAMus Award ceremony possible in this form.

Day 2 of the Conference: Current Status of the Consortium and Fishbowl Discussion on ‘Data Sovereignty, Infrastructural Resilience and Scientific Freedom’

Spokesperson Report, News about the Services and Working Areas of NFDI4Culture

On Thursday, 25th September 2025, NFDI4Culture presented the consortium's current status to the plenary assembly, providing reports and scientific contributions on the latest activities and services, and offering an outlook on upcoming project plans. To warm up, a live survey provided insights into which NFDI4Culture services are already particularly popular (which, incidentally, readers are welcome to decide for themselves). Supplemented by creative show interludes, NFDI4Culture staff then presented their updates, examples and insights on the various NFDI4Culture services and working areas, including:

• New Research Data Management Organiser for creating data management plans
• Data Quality Assessment and FAIR Check for evaluating the quality of your own data, now even more interactive and with a fairness indicator
• Collaboration between NFDI4Culture and various Specialised Information Services
• LIDO (Lightweight Information Describing Objects), an international XML standard for describing objects, and a lingua franca for museums, for which NFDI4Culture will be offering a LIDO service point in the future.
• MEI (Music Encoding Initiative), an open XML standard developed by the community for encoding musical notation. NFDI4Culture is currently planning an MEI repository and an MEI corpus for creative artists and researchers
• Theatre studies and performing arts data: development of services for event-related data (e.g. performances)
• FOSS (Free Open Source Software): further development of existing services in collaboration with the community
• Release of the third version of the NFDI4Culture Portal, as an access point to resources and services, as well as a research information system
• NFDI4Culture Registry for research tools and data services: not only for exploration, searching, filtering and discovery, but also as a contact point for researchers and developers who wish to list their offerings (software, scripts, web applications, data repositories or portals) centrally for reuse
• The Culture Knowledge Graph (KG) connects all research data of the community (data on around 18 million entities to date). In addition to the SPARQL interface, NFDI4Culture now offers the a new Data Search with a special incipit search for musical notation and an AI-based image search
• Institutional resilience for cultural heritage in the digital space: protection strategies for cultural assets and data to prevent disasters or crises

The presentations on these and all other topics will be made available shortly.

In the spokesperson report, Prof. Torsten Schrade, the consortium spokesperson, also reports on the active participation of various NFDI4Culture communities and the now approximately 70 participants who have contributed to international metadata standards, for example. Torsten Schrade emphasised:

“Participation is key; the heart of NFDI4Culture lies in a joint, community-led development of a shared data culture!”

Due to the broad range of disciplines represented, NFDI4Culture is one of the largest and most heterogeneous consortia in the NFDI. The communities of these different disciplines are now to be brought together into a “community of practice”, according to Prof. Holger Simon, co-spokesperson for NFDI4Culture,

“in order to bring our vision of Shared Data, Shared Practice and Shared Knowledge to life.”

Among others, the following topics were also addressed:

• The NFDI4Culture Helpdesk has evolved into the ‘backbone’ of NFDI4Culture, recording over 760 consultations on topics such as copyright, publications, and databases to date. With around 40% of Helpdesk enquiries going to the Legal Helpdesk, this illustrates that sustainability requires legal clarity.
• Further training in research data management (RDM) and data/code literacy is available through the Culture Research Data Academy, the Educational Resource Finder and the Culture Knowledge Base (central information medium on RDM offering handouts, video tutorials and curated link recommendations) - now with around 110 well-curated recommendations, all tailored to the NFDI4Culture community.
• The Research Output Index demonstrates what NFDI4Culture has to offer: conference contributions and reports, scientific literature and articles and much more.
• Community AAI (Authorisation, Authentication Identification), an NFDI basic service that allows users to log in to NFDI4Culture services and those of other consortia – log in once, use all services.
• Further developing services across consortia, for example Semantic Kompakkt (free software for annotating 3D data and a repository for storage): first mapping of a chemical molecule in Semantic Kompakkt in collaboration with NFDI4Chem.
• Internationalisation: exploring cooperation with subject-specific national and international GLAM infrastructures, and expanding the international network.

Consortium spokesperson Torsten Schrade summed it up nicely:

“Back to the future with NFDI4Culture: with innovation, participation, AI, 3D, KG, data quality and internationalisation – the adventure continues!”

Data Sovereignty, Infrastructural Resilience and Scientific Freedom – Fishbowl Discussion

Another highlight of the NFDI4Culture Community Plenary was the high-profile panel discussion on 'Data Sovereignty, Infrastructural Resilience and Scientific Freedom', featuring Prof. Dr. Andrea Rapp (President of the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz), Prof. Dr. York Sure-Vetter (Director of the NFDI) and Prof. Dr. Dörte Schmidt (NFDI Board of Trustees Member). This important programme item could also be followed online.

The interactive fishbowl discussion, which invited audience participation, addressed technical infrastructures and data rooms, as well as the safeguarding of fundamental values in our digital knowledge society. Digital sovereignty and societal resilience are negotiated in international processes with a geopolitical dimension that require a high degree of 'data diplomacy'. The discussion explored how the NFDI, particularly its consortia in the humanities and cultural sciences, can contribute to responsible digital transformation in Germany and Europe.

During the opening statements, the panellists shared their views on the topics under discussion. First to speak was Prof. Andrea Rapp, who stated that the NFDI4Culture Community Plenary demonstrated what 'organised by science' means : "This is more than just a handful of nerds; it's a vibrant community!" Three points were particularly important to Prof. Andrea Rapp in her speech: 1. In connection with the topic of scientific freedom, she addressed long-term commitments, using digital editions as an example of how they can support scientific freedom by providing transparent accountability, which could be optimally organised in the digital realm. 2. Data quality as a prerequisite for AI-supported processes: "The inevitable AI and large language models are probability models. These require trustworthy environments and a quality-assured data basis." 3. Andrea Rapp argues that the subject- and domain-specific expertise necessary for ensuring the long-term availability of humanities and cultural heritage data is primarily found in the academies, supplemented by the universities: "We need the mandate and the resources for this; then we will be well equipped for the task."

With his initial statement,  NFDI Director Prof. York Sure-Vetter outlined how the NFDI has grown over the past five years to become an "internationally visible infrastructure with technical foresight". Despite their disciplinary differences, the members of the NFDI have established a relationship of trust, enabling them to collaborate on cross-cutting issues. York Sure-Vetter also expressed his appreciation for the high level of professionalism at NFDI4Culture.
One of his key talking points was about democracy: "As a bottom-up knowledge infrastructure, the NFDI is important for democracy. We must preserve this! Transparency is also important for this." Furthermore, the NFDI's unique, federated structure creates resilience precisely through this distribution of technical resources and talent. The NFDI's resilience strategy incorporates cyber security, redundancy, and open standards. With its reliable, interoperable services and federated structure, the NFDI could also serve as a structural role model and driver of innovation within the EU.
The fact that NFDI Director York Sure-Vetter personally participated in the NFDI4Culture Community Plenary with contributions to the discussion is of course not a  given as there are in total 26 NFDI consortia and only 52 weeks in a year. He was, therefore, particularly welcomed by the community.

Prof. Dörte Schmidt began her speech by saying that she was "impressed by what we have achieved in five years: a wealth of data and how cooperatively we work together instead of competing with each other". She agreed with York Sure-Vetter that democracy is a fundamental requirement and that the freedom of science and art, as set out in Article 5 of the Basic Law, allows us to determine the kind of society we want.
Regarding data sovereignty, Dörte Schmidt described the NFDI as a "multi-headed sovereign" whose advantages we should exploit, as it provides an alternative to data hegemony and monopolies. This entailed technical, ethical and legal requirements, as well as negotiations in different legal jurisdictions. "To ensure infrastructural resilience, we need to embrace distribution, as distributed networks are less vulnerable. Redundancy is also needed to a certain extent. We are currently learning what resilience means, and that it often has to be weighed against efficiency, and above all, the struggle for funding." Dörte Schmidt ended her speech by calling upon us to "think in interconnected terms! That is our democratic duty."

During the following Fishbowl discussion, the invited panellists were joined by various community members from the audience, who took additional seats and participated in the discussion. The session was moderated by consortium spokesperson Torsten Schrade.

Regarding the NFDI's European connectivity, York Sure-Vetter envisions various services for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), including the authentication service. Moderator Torsten Schrade then passed the question on to the audience: "What services do we need?" Peter Gietz (DAASI International) seized the opportunityand a free chair in the discussion, confirming: "The NFDI4Culture-AAI [Authorisation, Authentication, Identification] works. NFDI4Culture is a great example of interconnectedness, also on the technical side of the services." Eduroam[1] was repeatedly mentioned as another positive example and met with much approval from the audience.

[1] Eduroam: an international university initiative that enables students and researchers to access Wi-Fi at all participating institutions via their university account. Similarly, the NFDI4Culture AAI service allows all users registered with NFDI4Culture through DFN to access the entire NFDI service ecosystem.

The continuation of the NFDI was also discussed. Dörte Schmidt strongly argued in favour of convincing politicians that "investing in minds" should be part of this continuation. Peter Gietz agreed, adding that "in a liberal environment, it is precisely these minds that drive innovation". Andrea Rapp also mentioned institutional continuity. Everyone agreed that stabilising the existing network was essential, so that funding would not have to start from scratch again.
The tension between democracy and capitalism was raised again during the discussion. Andrea Rapp introduced the concept of the commons [in the sense of a shared resource of the modern information society, such as free software] and noted: "Common property requires work." Moderator Torsten Schrade addressed the conflict between platform economy vs. commons, and asked: "Can we escape the platform giants?" York Sure-Vetter replied that it was a power struggle, and gave an example: "Large language models have surprised even experts, but more data no longer leads to better models — saturation is setting in. To operate them, you need data centres as big as Manhattan. If you think about power outages, for example... It's hard to escape that; we have to find our niche."

In their closing statements, the panellists shared their assessment of what will be important in the coming years. Dörte Schmidt argued that "we should focus on our tasks and goals, and especially on our unique selling point that sets us apart from the big players. We can make a difference in society." Andrea Rapp emphasised that science is supported by people who need to be empowered to take care of sovereignty as part of their scientific work. This requires freedom, contact persons, and financial resources. York Sure-Vetter stressed the importance of validating services, which on the one hand works bottom-up: communities show through their use whether certain services, such as the Helpdesk, are popular or not. At the same time, management must make top-down decisions and be able to explain to politicians where we see the money as being well invested’. Therefore, what is needed is both supportive policy and users who value the services.

After the event, Andrea Rapp summarised her key insights from the discussion for this report:

“The sustainable future of the NFDI presents us with significant challenges, yet there is strong will and commitment within the community, both at the grassroots level and among institutions, to confront these challenges and take responsibility. To enable this, institutions and researchers must be empowered.”

Accompanying Programme: Spirio Concert, Inspiring Singing, Dining and Celebration Culture

The presentations and discussions were enlivened by a musical programme of the highest quality. The “Early Birds” (the first 50 plenary registrants) were surprised with a particularly special concert experience: in the Kalkhof-Rose Hall, Germany’s first chamber music hall built in wood construction, the innovative Steinway Spirio concert technology was demonstrated. This is a self-playing system that can transmit or record live performances by pianists worldwide in real time from one Spirio piano to another, and reproduce them with original authenticity, as if the artist herself or himself were sitting at the keyboard. Pieces were performed by Hayato Sumino, Vladimir Horowitz, Jacob Collier and Arseniy Gusev.

Yet all other guests also had the opportunity to enjoy a special concert: soprano Lindsey Neumann from the USA, accompanied at the piano by concert pianist Andrea Jantzen, performed songs by F. Mendelssohn, R. Quilter and G. Puccini. With intensity and presence in voice and performance, they conveyed to the audience the feeling of being personally addressed. Lindsey Neumann shared that she had been instructed during her preparation to inspire the audience – a task she undoubtedly succeeded in!

Beyond the concert programme, Plenary attendees also had the chance to experience the event through all the senses, especially through taste. The vibrant day programme culminated in a dinner, a glass of fine wine, and a lively evening party — an event already legendary within NFDI4Culture circles. DJ Fran(ziska Fritzsche) from BASE4NFDI, together with music requests from the audience, ensured an exuberant (dance) night that will surely remain in many memories.

Day 3 of the Conference: Marketplace of Possibilities, 4CultureHour on Mastodon, and Voices from the Community

Marketplace of Possibilities and 4CultureHour on Mastodon

On Friday, September 26th 2025, NFDI4Culture hosted the Marketplace of Possibilities — a physical space for connection, where services from NFDI4Culture, as well as participants and partner organisations of the consortium, presented themselves through poster sessions and engaged in direct conversation. Attendees were invited to stroll, explore, and network. In the Speakers’ Corner, brief market pitches highlighted interesting stands, events, or promising ideas.

Dr. Fabian Pittroff (Ruhr-University Bochum) presented, for example, an “Infrabel on ethnography of research data handling” on his poster. The term Infrabel combines the words infrastructure and fable, and in this case addressed different forms of research data stewardship with the aid of the field mouse and the pelican. Unlike the classical fable, in which animals embody human traits, in the Infabel these animals represent characteristics of infrastructures. According to Fabian Pittroff, the Marketplace of Possibilities had been worthwhile:

“The posters worked well to spark conversation.”

In a brief interview, when asked about his impressions of the NFDI4Culture Community Plenary, he said:

“I came to the Plenary because I feel that NFDI4Culture could potentially save me a lot of work in getting up to speed with the topic of FDM. I also noted down many unexpected insights. I am also interested in how NFDI4Culture is organised. There was considerable self-reflection within the consortium, which offered valuable glimpses into the inner circle — while still making me feel very welcome. And what remains in my memory from the Fishbowl discussion are keywords such as ‘distributed but interconnected structures’, ‘pride in speaking about our data’, and ‘joy in heterogeneity’.”

Other marketplace visitors also benefited from the poster presentations:

“I actually learned something at the posters that I can use for our project Buber-Korrespondenzen Digital”,

Thomas Kollatz (Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz) added with a smile.
A compilation of all presented posters will be published shortly.

The Marketplace of Possibilities was accompanied by the 4CultureHour, which even extended beyond a single “hour” into multiple sessions, and the NFDI4Culture Social Media Team live on Mastodon. The social media reporting from the first two days had already generated notable engagement. On the final day of the conference, attendees now had the opportunity to react directly to the posters or ask questions — in some cases, these could even be answered by the poster presenters themselves on Mastodon. Thus, the widespread enthusiasm was successfully carried over into the digital space. Further impressions from NFDI4Culture in the social media sphere are also available on LinkedIn and on Mastodon under #4CultureCommunityPlenary.

The Community Reflects

Before everyone prepared to head home, several Plenary participants shared their personal reflections on the event with us. Dennis Ried (University of Halle-Wittenberg), who by the way had been awarded the NFDI4Culture Music Award in 2024, summarised his Plenary experience as follows:

“I wanted to get a sense of what services NFDI4Culture offers, what they can do, and how they work. Personally, I’m especially interested in the connection between 3D data and musicology — and how this can be applied. There are promising opportunities for interdisciplinary data exchange, for example in the study of ancient music in conjunction with archaeology, such as when music is found on ancient amphorae. During the Data-Stories workshop, I incidentally also learned about the many possibilities offered by the Culture Knowledge Graph. Overall, I find it impressive how strongly NFDI has emerged as a whole from a thousand individual parts. The one thing I still haven’t fully grasped are all the internal acronyms — if I can wish for one thing, it would be a glossary of abbreviations,” he added with a laugh.

Andreas Kohlbecker from ZKM Karlsruhe, a participant partner in NFDI4Culture, attended the Community Plenary to learn about the current status of the consortium and where it is heading — and also because he wanted to explore the consortium’s communication channels, such as RocketChat. Furthermore, he took part in the workshop on Base4NFDI services:

“There you could see what has already been achieved within NFDI. I wanted to find out exactly how I could use the tools at my institution to solve problems. The workshop was truly a highlight, as it sparked conversations that continued throughout the three days of the conference. Overall, it was definitely worth coming to Mainz: I felt very welcome, expanded my network – and NFDI4Culture knows how to throw great parties!”

For the future, he would like to see the consortium grow even further: “NFDI4Culture must become more European!” Exactly that is also part of NFDI4Culture’s internationalisation efforts.

NFDI colleague Veronica Haas (University of Mannheim), representing the BERD@NFDI consortium, bid farewell with these words:

“What a beautiful conference — and the musical performances were truly impressive!”

NFDI4Culture, too, looks forward to reconnecting with the community — especially after this fruitful exchange, collaborative learning, sparkling, celebration, networking, discussions, concert experiences, culinary delights, and dancing. We’ll see you at the next Culture Community Plenary – at the very latest!