Add three newsitems July/August

renewal proposal, nfdi collaborations, base4 user conference contributions

src/content/news/2024-07-29-nfdi-collaborations.md

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+date: 2024-07-29
+title: Second overview of NFDI collaborations published
+preview-text: The National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) in Germany has established itself and now comprises 26 consortia covering various disciplines. The main aim of the NFDI is to establish a cross-disciplinary research data infrastructure and to make scientific research more efficient. The initiative thus contributes to strengthening the research landscape in Germany and creates a solid foundation for future scientific breakthroughs. An overview from January 2023 described the extensive collaborative activities...
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+The National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) in Germany has established itself and now comprises 26 consortia covering various disciplines. The main aim of the NFDI is to establish a cross-disciplinary research data infrastructure and to make scientific research more efficient. The initiative thus contributes to strengthening the research landscape in Germany and creates a solid foundation for future scientific breakthroughs.
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+DataPLANT is part of the initiative since the first funding round and already collaborating with various other consortia in a wide range of areas. These include, but are not limited to: education and training, outreach and communication, the portfolio to reuse and co-development of services as well as various forms of user support (e.g., through a collaborative helpdesk and knowledge base). This will strengthen existing services and foster the consolidation of infrastructures. The collaboration within the NFDI will increase the number of partnered consortia to evolve in response to growing and emerging demands. These activities ensure that we can adapt to new challenges and effectively incorporate target groups that were previously underrepresented geographically or topically e.g. in modelling or image analysis. DataPLANT concepts and services are already helping to advance RDM in other Life Science disciplines in the NFDI, so are also of interest to NFDI4BIOIMAGE. The growing intensity of collaboration will foster joint activities in terms of services, data, and research in RDM strategies in the shared research domains and beyond.
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+An overview from January [2023](https://zenodo.org/records/8296725) described the extensive collaborative activities between the consortia. This collaboration is diverse and dynamic, which is reflected in the new publication from [2024](https://zenodo.org/records/12819087). A tabular overview provides detailed information on the type and scope of those collaborations, the number of which has doubled since the last publication. DataPLANT is and has been involved in bilateral as well as multilateral collaborations and plans to intensify this networking in the future.
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+Further on, our consortium actively promotes DataPLANT’s ARC RO-Crate concepts in various national and NFDI contexts and in Life Science RDM workshops and is adapting this jointly with FAIRagro to the needs of the respective FAIRagro use cases as well. A project that combines both worlds was accepted by last year’s Biohackathon Germany ([Enabling continuous RDM using Annotated Research Contexts with RO-Crate profiles for ISA](https://github.com/elixir-europe/biohackathon-projects-2023/tree/main/14)), which led to a biweekly developer cycle to establish the ARC as an overarching joint concept. DataPLANT made further contextual or thematic connections with other consortia at the Love Data Week, and has worked with NFDI4Chem, NFDI4Health and NFDI-MatWerk for consultation on our solution to bridge the ontology gap. FDOs developed by DataPLANT are therefore being integrated into other areas of methodology. Among other things, the close cooperation is intended to harmonise interdisciplinary services in order to simplify their use for interdisciplinary scientists.

src/content/news/2024-08-07-base4nfdi-user-conference.md

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+date: 2024-08-07
+title: Notification on accepted contributions to the Base4NFDI User Conference
+preview-text: DataPLANT is among the initiators and strong supporters of Base4NFDI, actively embracing joint efforts on infrastructure development. Thus we contributed to the recent call-for-participation to the first Base4NFDI User Conference held in Berlin in November 2024. This two-day event aims to showcase basic services...
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+DataPLANT is among the initiators and strong supporters of Base4NFDI, actively embracing joint efforts on infrastructure development. Thus we contributed to the recent call-for-participation to the first [Base4NFDI User Conference](https://events.gwdg.de/event/658/) held in Berlin in November 2024. This two-day event aims to showcase basic services, enabling the audience to understand the offerings, explore integration into the NFDI community, and evaluate technical interoperability and local policy implications. The interactive program will cover various services, provide insights from supporting institutions, and address alignment with national and European infrastructures. Our submitted proposals on ["Experiences and status quo of IAM / CAAI in DataPLANT"](https://events.gwdg.de/event/658/contributions/2379/), ["Software repository for the NFDI"](https://events.gwdg.de/event/658/contributions/2386/), ["Cloud based flexible service infrastructure stack for the NFDI"](https://events.gwdg.de/event/658/contributions/2388/) as well as a joint contribution with NFDI4BIOIMAGE were accepted either as short talk or posters.
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+DataPLANT began integrating community AAI (Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure) early, using its expertise to evaluate Base4NFDI IAM options for inclusion and participating in the implementation phase. The preliminary results are reported in the first contribution mentioned. We are preparing a proposal for a GitLab or general-purpose versioning/collaboration service to be developed into a Base4NFDI service (second contribution). Relevant Base4NFDI services should include the Git or GitLab4NFDI versioning.Further, we contribute to general architecture considerations in the NFDI, reflected in our third contribution.
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+Previously, we already contributed to the recent CoRDI conference on topics like ["DataPLANT cloud oriented service infrastructure: Open for integration and adaptation."](doi.org/10.52825/cordi.v1i.414) and ["Improving the research desktop experience for OpenStack VDI integrating hardware accelerated rendering and remote transport."](doi.org/10.52825/cordi.v1i.413).
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+Our aim is to consolidate services in the future and provide input to common services for either the whole NFDI or consortia working with similar infrastructures. Our consortium's ongoing involvement aims to strengthen the sections, actively contribute to the development of joint solutions for common challenges and achieve tangible cross-consortia results. Thus, our consortium is already shifting its original focus from developing and providing infrastructure and services within the consortium to leveraging central infrastructure to varying degrees. 

src/content/news/2024-08-13-dataplant-renewal-proposal.md

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+date: 2024-08-13
+title: DataPLANT renewal proposal submitted
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+preview-text: After several months of preparation, we submitted the DataPLANT proposal for the second funding phase. A big thank you to everyone for their professional and intellectual input, as well as to the writing team for their commitment and perseverance! The fundamental goal of DataPLANT is to foster community participation and engagement by providing support that facilitates research data management (RDM) and FAIR compliance for researchers. It aims to bridge the gap...
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+After several months of preparation, we submitted the DataPLANT proposal for the second funding phase. A big thank you to everyone for their professional and intellectual input, as well as to the writing team for their commitment and perseverance!
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+The fundamental goal of DataPLANT is to foster community participation and engagement by providing support that facilitates research data management (RDM) and FAIR compliance for researchers. It aims to bridge the gap between research operations and data management, ensuring every researcher is equipped for effective RDM without separating these concerns. DataPLANT's objectives in the second funding phase thus even focus stronger on empowering the community to "employ, contribute, govern" and are supported by technical objectives to "ensure, develop, interoperate", and integrative objectives to "deploy, network, exchange". We grew the consortium significantly to now 39 participants. By including the IPK Gaterslebenand the configuration changed to a certain degree to adapt to changing internal and external requirements. 
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+Community Objectives: Employ, contribute, govern
+The DataPLANT strategy of community empowerment and engagement will enable systematic data collection at various locations using diverse methods, making data readily available for the community. This approach ensures easy, lasting, and systematic access for third parties, facilitating the combination and analysis of such data across different storage spaces, disciplines, and countries. The plant community's active involvement is supported both by geodistributed Data Stewards funded through DataPLANT and Data Stewards from partners who are embedded in our consortium. They are aided by technologies and services developed with continuous feedback and open planning involving active community participation. 
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+Technical Objectives: Ensure, develop, interoperate
+DataPLANT strives to establish RDM practices, tools, procedures and services that enable collaborative research. It will provide a common framework and best practices for data handling, annotation standards, and quality control in plant science and across domains, in close collaboration with the researchers and other stakeholders, to meet the FAIR requirements.
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+Integrative Objectives: Deploy, network, exchange
+DataPLANT takes an active role in forming and applying universal, inter-consortia procedures and benchmarks in RDM alongside other consortia. At the heart of DataPLANT's strategy is the enhancement of existing services and conventions to meet the specific needs of plant researchers, rather than creating entirely new developments. This integrative strategy for achieving lasting sustainability hinges on engagement from both users and the broader community, thereby establishing a two-way, communicative structure and a disseminated, harmonized service environment.
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+We will work closely with the other NFDI consortia on all of these activities to push forward the development towards OneNFDI. Our next task is to prepare for the presentation of the application to the NFDI expert panel of the German Research Foundation in November 2024. The final funding decision will be made by the Joint Science Conference in summer 2025.