NFDI4Culture Metadata API

How does good research data management (RDM) work? Researchers and staff in cultural heritage institutions are increasingly confronted with this question. It is true that there are now experts, such as the RDM initiatives of the federal states or the research data centers where researchers can find general information, but when GLAM institutions require support with questions specific to their research, they often search in vain – until now: With the Culture Knowledge Base NFDI4Culture has created a low-threshold access point to subject or data specific information, especially for the field of material and immaterial cultural heritage.

The Culture Knowledge Base is the place where NFDI4Culture guidelines, reports and specifications are published. In addition, it offers curated link recommendations to high-quality and open educational resources provided by the community. All guidelines published in the Knowledge Base are complemented by a permanent, sustainable and open data publication on Zenodo, such as for example the Introduction to research data management in the arts, cultural studies and humanities (in German).

The NFDI4Culture communities are also involved in the creation process of the Culture Knowledge Base resources, thus, their needs and experiences can be directly incorporated into the publications. During the writing process, the content is discussed with other experts in the field. An integrated review function of the Knowledge Base enables a continuous quality control as well as an exchange with users, results of which can be documented through the versioning function.

The "Guideline for the sustainable development and use of research software" published at the end of 2022 is exemplary on how current needs were identified and collaborative efforts successfully integrated: It was produced with the active participation of the Experts Forum of the NFDI4Culture Task Area Research Tools and Data Services. Together, gaps within the range of specialised and data-specific information were identified. The guideline gives a precise and compact overview of the areas of action for the development and use of FAIR research software. Since its release this data publication has been accessed over 417 times on Zenodo, and over 306 times in the Culture Knowledge Base.