NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment

Preamble

Science advances when knowledge is openly shared. In response to the growing geo-societal challenges of our planet, and in light of the https://sdgs.un.org/goalsUN Sustainable Development Goals, trustworthy science increasingly requires the open sharing of well-documented data and their provenance in an ethical manner. This requires a cultural and systemic change that evolves current practices and that promotes solutions for data sharing within and beyond the Earth System Sciences. Only by working together as a community can this happen.

At its core, Earth System Sciences aims to unravel the complex processes that drive the Earth as a dynamic system. This includes the fluxes of matter and energy in the five main spheres - the geosphere, hydrosphere (including the cryosphere), atmosphere, biosphere and anthroposphere (cf. Leopoldina’s report Earth System Science: Discovery, Diagnosis, and Solutions in Times of Global Change).

Data acquisition, simulation, integration, and analysis are crucial to understanding these complex processes. The Earth System Sciences community already embraces many Open Science practices, including making its many types of research outputs findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable for humans and machines (as stated in the The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship). Equal priority should be given to data management and analysis tools that enable data-driven methods. Efficient and effective use of research outputs, facilities, and funding, as well as appropriate reward systems and recognition of all research activities are equally important parts of Earth System Sciences data activities.

NFDI4Earth - the consortium for the Earth System Sciences within the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) - aims to become a central facilitator for research data management in the German Earth System Sciences community, enabling more open knowledge sharing. The mission of NFDI4Earth is to provide easy, efficient, open and, as far as possible, unrestricted and standardised access to all relevant Earth system data, scientific data management and data analysis services, and to ensure sustainable and quality-assured research data management infrastructures.
This commitment will help to engage the NFDI4Earth community in shaping, promoting, and implementing the NFDI4Earth agenda. In the longer term, the results of this work will also help to drive the much needed change in the way research is evaluated, as expressed in the DORA and CoARA declarations.

NFDI4Earth invites institutions and individual researchers, laboratories, infrastructure providers, publishers, academic societies, government agencies, administrations, industry, funders, and research organisations (see the list of signatories) to sign the following statement of commitment and become ambassadors for change towards more FAIR and Open data practices in Earth System Sciences. To support this shift, the NFDI4Earth website provides background information and guidance for different stakeholders.

Sign the Commitment at http://nfdi4earth.de/commit .

NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment

Signatories of the NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment pledge to support NFDI4Earth’s mission, products, and services. The signature of members and/or representatives of the Earth System Sciences community is a public signal of agreement with the goals and values of the Commitment. By collectively supporting the Commitment, the signatories realise NFDI4Earth as a community of practice, taking into account the full range of expertise and all relevant user groups of Earth System Sciences for a sustainable shift towards more FAIR and Open Research.

As signatories...

We commit to advance FAIRness and Openness in Earth System Sciences.

(1) Commit to the mission of NFDI in bringing together research communities to provide data for the common good, and the role of NFDI4Earth as a facilitator of sustainable, collaboratively developed solutions in Earth System Sciences.

(2) Support and uphold, where appropriate and possible, the principles and values outlined in existing Open Science declarations and statements.

(3) Be familiar with relevant data laws and acts, especially those related to geospatial data, in both national and European jurisdictions. These laws facilitate data sharing at both national and international levels.

(4) Give credit to all sources underlying our research findings and, whenever possible, credit is given through proper citations.

(5) Choose to publish Earth System Sciences data in Earth System Sciences domain repositories and other suitable research infrastructures that meet all four aspects of FAIR principles and consider the specific characteristics of Earth System Sciences data.

(6) Strengthen FAIR and Open Data practices by supporting educational networks, robust training programmes, and the production of educational materials that promote transparency and accessibility of research outputs.

(7) Adopt Data Management Plans as important tools for all research projects. These plans are invaluable for strategically planning data documentation, publication, and collaboratively monitoring data management activities. We seek and consider expert curation and guidance for them.

(8) Where possible, use open and permissive data and software licences that legally enable the envisioned free and open sharing of Earth System Sciences data.

(9) Support and align scientific work with governing bodies and organisations that advance the underlying causes of this commitment.

We value data infrastructures and data experts.

(10) Recognise the vital role that Earth System Sciences domain repositories and their curation services play in achieving and preserving the highest possible FAIRness and Openness in the Earth System Sciences. As researchers, institutions, and funding agencies, we endeavour to ensure the sustainability of these repositories and other relevant research infrastructures.

(11) Collaborate with data curators and repository managers and leverage their expertise to make Earth System Sciences research outputs transparent, machine-readable, interoperable, and re-usable in the long term. They use diverse approaches, such as the NFDI4Earth Label, to document and advance interoperability across data repositories.

(12) Adhere to and contribute to international standards for harmonising Earth System Sciences data, metadata, data quality, and application programming interfaces (APIs). Support their implementation and development across research infrastructures, as this is crucial for effective interdisciplinary research and advancements in novel analysis methods such as Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning (AI & ML).

Acknowledgements

This work has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the project NFDI4Earth (TA4 M4.2, DFG project no. 460036893, https://www.nfdi4earth.de/) within the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI, https://www.nfdi.de/).

We thank all contributors from the NFDI4Earth community and beyond for their questions, feedback, edits, and their inspirational work that this commitment is grounded on. People who have agreed are listed in alphabetical order on the website and as contributors on the Zenodo record using CRediT. However, we extend our sincere thanks to all unnamed contributors for their inputs, be they small, indirect, or given in passing, from the NFDI4Earth community and beyond, especially the members of the NFDI4Earth steering group and the participants of the in-person workshop “Towards a Cultural Change in ESS RDM Workshop“ at the 3rd NFDI4Earth Plenary in Dresden in May 2024.

Note: The list below will be updated as confirmations by contributors are collected!

Citation and feedback

Full citation: NFDI4Earth Consortium. 2024. NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment (NFDI4EarthDeliverable D4.2.1). NFDI4Earth Community on Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10123880.

You can provide anonymous feedback at https://redcap.zih.tu-dresden.de/redcap/surveys/?s=YKTL79MPMEHDTMAK.

Daniel Nüst | TUD Dresden University of Technology | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0024-5046
Jörg Seegert | TUD Dresden University of Technology | https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9357-2830
Lars Bernard | TUD Dresden University of Technology, Professor Geoinformatics | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3085-7457
Carsten Keßler | Bochum University of Applied Sciences | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9724-820X
Farzaneh Sadeghi | Bochum University of Applied Sciences | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7920-4289
Jie Dodo Xu | Goethe-Universität Frankfurt | https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8239-2076
Anna Brauer | TUD Dresden University of Technology |https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7092-1492
Auriol Degbelo | https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5087-8776
Jonas Grieb | Senckenberg - Leibniz Institution for Biodiversity and Earth System Research | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8876-1722
Najla Rettberg | TUD Dresden University of Technology | https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1888-2294

Dominik Hezel | Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5059-2281
Sheryl Singerling
Andreas Hübner |Freie Universität Berlin | https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7342-9789

Your name, group, or organisation is missing? Sign the commitment here: nfdi4earth.de/commit.
Do you have any problems with signing? Please contact the NFDI4Earth Helpdesk at helpdesk@nfdi4earth.de.

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Additional information

National and international statements and guidelines for Open Science practices

The core values of Open Science and Open Research are defined in the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.
The Committee on Data of the International Science Council, CoData, wrote the Beijing Declaration on Research Data in 2019. It states core principles for the handling of research data and aims to promote global collaboration on public research data.
The Open Data Charter is a collaboration between governments and organisations working together on a shared set of principles (ODC principles).
The Coalition for Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences (COPDESS) created the Commitment Statement in the Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences. This statement provides guidance on publishing research outputs, namely data, software, protocols, samples, and standard information about them. The COPDESS statement emphasises the values of curation, domain repositories, and linking resources through metadata.
The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) from 2012 and the 2023 agreement by the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) urgently call for the reformation of research assessment. These documents provide guidance for funding agencies, institutions, publishers, metric providers, and researchers to reform research assessment practices focusing on qualitative judgements and responsible quantitative indicators.
The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure guide organisations in building and providing sustainable open infrastructures.
As a community effort of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), representatives from across the digital repository community have developed the TRUST Principles for digital repositories to demonstrate digital repository trustworthiness: transparency, responsibility, user focus, sustainability, and technology. These principles provide a common framework to facilitate discussion and implementation of best practice in digital preservation by all stakeholders.
The FORCE11 Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles recognize the necessity of creating citation practices that are both human understandable and machine-actionable and provide a set of guiding principles to achieve this.
The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility, ethics) remind us to consider power differentials and historical contexts. These principles complement the FAIR and open data movements to consider both people and purpose in their advocacy and pursuits, reflecting the crucial role of data in advancing Indigenous innovation and self-determination.
The DFG rules for Safeguarding Good Research Practice provide guidelines on giving proper credit, and are a useful resource for proper practice and conduct in the research community.
The Turing Way handbook to reproducible, ethical and collaborative data science provides information on all aspects of FAIR and Open research, including licensing, code, project set-up, sensitive data, communication, and many more.

Data acts and other regulations related to Earth System Sciences

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): rules relating to the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data to the free movement of personal data; realised into national laws, such as the German DSGVO.
The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community Directive (INSPIRE) serves to create an infrastructure for the shared use of spatial data by public authorities in Europe. By defining common standards for 34 spatial data themes, the directive makes it easier to find, share, and use spatial data.
The German Spatial Data Access Act (Geodatenzugangsgesetz - GeoZG) serves to establish a national infrastructure for spatial data within the framework of the European Directive 2007/2/EC (INSPIRE Directive). Since 2012, the law enables the free use of spatial data collected by federal authorities as open data.
The Geological Data Act (Geologiedatengesetz, GeoIDG) is the law on the governmental geological survey (e.g., by mapping the subsurface through drilling) which regulates the recording, archiving, public provision, and accessibility of geological data for public purposes.
Federal and state archive laws concern the publication and archival of geospatial data, especially from government agencies, such as the German BArchG or the Bavarian BayArchivG.
In spring of 2023, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) launched the consultation on the Research Data Act envisaged in the coalition agreement. The aim is to improve access to data for research and to create a framework for the transfer, storage, and protection of data.

Governing bodies and organisations supporting FAIR Earth System Sciences through specifications and standards

The National Research Data Infrastructure (Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur, NFDI) promotes data as a common good for excellent research, organised by the scientific community in Germany. NFDI4Earth is the consortium for the Earth System Sciences within NFDI.
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is a European Commission initiative to develop an infrastructure providing services promoting open science practices. It is advanced by multiple projects and stakeholders and governed by the EOSC Association.
The Research Data Alliance (RDA) provides a neutral space where its members can come together to develop and adopt infrastructure that promotes data-sharing and data-driven research. One concrete group is the ESIP/RDA Interest Group on Earth, Space and Environmental Sciences, which provides a forum for the development of FAIR practices of data sharing in Earth System Sciences.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) defines a series of specifications and standards as a foundation for interoperability of geoinformation applications and is committed to improving access to geospatial information.
ISO/TC 211 Geographic information/Geomatics defines a structured set of standards concerning objects or phenomena that are directly or indirectly associated with a location relative to the Earth. These standards comprise specifications on metadata (e.g. ISO19115), data models, encodings and service interfaces.
Spatial Data on the Web Working Group is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) working group to develop and maintain vocabularies and best practices encouraging better sharing of spatial data on the web and identifying areas where standards should be developed jointly by both W3C and the OGC.
GeoDCAT is an extension of the DCAT application profile for data portals in Europe for describing geospatial datasets and services.
GDI-DE: as the Spatial Data Infrastructure Germany, GDI-DE implements the INSPIRE Directive and joins the Federal Government, the Länder and local authorities to make public spatial data available in an open and standardised manner.