Do you have questions about this service or suggestions for the Incubator? You will find information at the bottom of the page!
The term Commons refers to resources (in the digital environment code, data and knowledge) “that emerge from self-organised processes of joint needs-oriented production, management, maintenance and/or use (commoning)”. Source: Wikipedia.
The Commons are therefore a collection and aggregation of the knowledge accumulated and produced in NFDI4Objects. This website indexes the Commons in a catalogue and provides human- and machine-readable links to the storage locations in repositories.
All resources listed here in the Commons are living documents and data sets that can be updated via formalised, participatory and collaborative processes.
The Incubator is a first step towards the commons. In it, the consortium collects existing materials that support the development of the Commons. It also acts as a knowledge base to provide the consortium with orientation in discussions and thus practical help in making decisions in daily practice. The Incubator is an open portal that lists materials in eight categories. All entries are modelled in accordance with the NFDI CoreOntology and are additionally indexed using keywords. Like the Commons, the Incubator is not a repository. The resources themselves are stored externally via persistent URLs.
The following categories apply to the structural indexing of resources in the Incubator and in the Commons:
In addition to the categories, tags narrow down the topic of the resource.
The overarching goals of NFDI4Objects include the implementation, harmonisation and enhancement of standards and the implementation of collaborative governance and sustainability. The Commons are a central building block in the provision of services that contribute to achieving these goals.
The Commons are intended to compensate for the lack of open, quality-assured, sustainable and FAIR materials on which the management of research data can be based.
The consortium therefore assumes the following for the properties of the materials:
The materials are subject to an open licence. Depending on the content, the following licences can be taken into account:
The quality of the resources in the Commons is ensured by defined processes.
All resources in the Commons originate from the results of Temporary Working Groups (TWGs), which are accompanied by Community Clusters (CC) and have undergone a public comment phase.
All processes are organised in a participatory manner and are open to all interested parties. See the information on these processes on the NFDI4Objects website.
The dynamic development in all fields of digital collection, processing, analysis and provision of research data requires the continuous adaptation of the basic regulations for their management.
Resources in the Commons are therefore subject to licences that provide a reliable legal basis for their further development. Application-neutral technical provision adapted to digital publication processes is a further prerequisite for the sustainability of resources in the Commons. The consortium is working on specifications for this.
Like the research data itself, the resources of the Commons should also be made available in respect to the FAIR principles. The prerequisites for this also have to be created first.
Software is also data. However, we understand software in the sense of the Commons as the implementation of standards and specifications. In this respect, the Commons do not provide evidence of standard software; rather, the resources in the Commons are intended to support the development of standard-compliant software.
If you have any questions about the Incubator, the Commons or the processes, you can find further information on the NFDI4Objects portal. You can contact us directly via the helpdesk.
Please also send us suggestions for the Incubator via the helpdesk. Ideally, you should provide us with
Our editorial team will then get in touch with you!