The development of the NFDI will be organized along the different scientific fields, through consortia of data producers, data users and infrastructure providers that represent the respective scientific communities. The wide scope and interdisciplinary nature of neuroscientific research, together with the important role of neuroscience in Germany, calls for an NFDI consortium dedicated to neuroscience.
Heterogeneity, complexity and growing volumes of neuroscience data, paired with the demand to re-use valuable experimental data, make it increasingly important to provide infrastructural support for the data management tasks of neuroscientists. This may include very diverse aspects, for example, tools to facilitate the acquisition of experimental data and metadata, standards to improve interoperability of data from multiple sources, services to store and organize the provenance of data acquisition and processing workflows, or enhancing accessibility and interoperability of databases, repositories, and other resources. Some solutions have started to emerge but need to be integrated and further developed to achieve a coherent and efficient data management framework for neuroscientists. This process will have to consider all subdomains of neuroscience and all methodological approaches with their requirements on research data, addressing the specific needs of the researchers.
A working group has formed to bring together scientists and institutions interested in contributing to an NFDI consortium for neuroscience, and to develop the conceptual basis of a research data management infrastructure for the neurosciences.
