5 Steps to Base4NFDI Service Integration – A Guide for NFDI Consortia

5 Steps to Base4NFDI Service Integration A Guide for NFDI Consortia Created by Jana Tatscheck, Antje Manske, Najla Rettberg | Last updated: November 2025 Purpose This document provides guidance to support NFDI consortia in integrating the Base4NFDI basic services into their service portfolios, by suggesting a roadmap and templates. Please mind that determining how your community is willing to use a basic service is likely an iterative process. It might therefore occasionally be helpful to return to elements of a previous step while you move along integration. 5 Steps overview Step 1: Setting the Scene Get informed on Base4NFDI’s currently funded basic services by inviting the service stewards (e.g., to your community event). Step 2: Assess Each Service for Your Needs Assess and document the current status and future perspectives of RDM infrastructure and practices in your scientific community. Help yourself by using the template table provided. Step 3: Schedule a Service Consultation Get 1:1 consultations with our service teams to map your assessed RDM needs to their offerings and kick off your collaboration. Step 4: Assess Integration Pathways and Document Agreements Assess and document the potential of integrating a basic service in your consortium / partner institutions. You can use the template table provided. Step 5: Allocate Resources for Service Integration Estimate and reserve technical, personnel and financial resources needed for service integration (and include them in your prolongation proposal). 5 Steps to Base4NFDI Service Integration: A Guide for NFDI Consortia 1 Step 1: Setting the Scene As a first step when considering to integrate a basic service, gaining an initial overview of the currently available Base4NFDI services and finding relevant information and resources is key. To support this, Base4NFDI recommends inviting our service stewards1, experts on a given Base4NFDI service, to give a presentation to your relevant stakeholders. We offer online and on-site presentations (e.g. as part of a community event) that may include a general overview of our Base4NFDI processes and services, a focus on selected basic services or a key aspect of your choice. Please let us know in advance about the audience/target group, their previous knowledge regarding Base4NFDI and the intended goal of the presentation. Past presentations can be found in our Zenodo community. Please contact the Base4NFDI Office (base4nfdi-offic[email protected].de) and/or our Base4NFDI Service Stewards (base4nfdi-servicestewar[email protected].de). Step 2: Assess Each Service for Your Needs This second step is about systematically identifying the fit between your infrastructure offers and RDM practices and our basic services. In order to map a Base4NFDI service offer to your needs, we recommend to firstly assess if and how a technology (e.g. terminologies, persistent identifiers) and related topics like standards, methods and workflows are currently used in the scientific discipline(s) of your community, and secondly, to gather the perspective of your partner institutions on eligible infrastructure and future RDM practices carried out by infrastructure staff and researchers. On this basis, you can decide next if a service is a match for your consortium. To support this step, a template table (Table 1) and guiding questions are provided in the appendix. Again, we suggest involving your partner institutions and other key stakeholders in this step, to 1) raise awareness and inclusion and 2) understand perspectives, needs and concerns of different roles and disciplines in your community. For support, an example agenda for an assessment workshop is provided in the appendix, and Base4NFDI offers to assist with conducting it. To prepare this step we additionally recommend taking a look into the service links in the ‘further recommendations’ below Table 1, though you do not need to fully understand a service yet. Note that there are common parts (e.g. software solutions, training on train-the-trainer level, support, consulting) and components that are individual for each service (e.g. incubator projects for service integration2). Also keep in mind that service development is meant to be shaped by NFDI consortia and their requirements. 2 The incubator concept is outlined in https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14973821 (File 3). Please check the respective basic service websites for more information on their incubators. 1 Base4NFDI service stewards: https://base4nfdi.de/about/people/service-stewards 5 Steps to Base4NFDI Service Integration: A Guide for NFDI Consortia 2 Step 3: Schedule a Service Consultation This third step is about understanding and discussing the offer of a Base4NFDI service in more detail. Based on your findings from the previous step, you can now consult with our basic service teams on how to map your needs and support requests to their offerings, clarify questions and kick off collaboration. We recommend attending their open hours or making a consulting appointment with a basic service team, to understand the service components and identify options of service integration and collaboration together. Current opportunities on how to get involved with the service teams can be found on the Base4NFDI website (https://base4nfdi.de/projects) and Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14973821). Guiding Questions To support your consultation, here are questions we consider useful to assess a Base4NFDI service and make informed decisions on service integration: ● Who is the target group of the basic service? (e.g. infrastructure staff, RDM-responsible staff, data stewards, researchers) ● What is the added value of the basic service? Which gap in (NFDI/your consortium’s) infrastructure does it bridge? Are there alternatives that need to be considered? ● What service components does the basic service offer? ● On what level does service integration occur? (e.g. single integration on consortium level, single/multiple integrations at partner institutions) ● What integration efforts (e.g. time and resources) can be expected? ● How can your community (requirements) participate in shaping the service? ● Does the service offer incubator projects (or similar) to support integration? What could be the scope related to your consortium and its services? Step 4: Assess Integration Pathways and Document Agreements This fourth step is about assessing and documenting jointly identified integration pathways for a Base4NFDI service in your consortium. We recommend to determine consortium partners interested in a service and document its integration potential by describing its benefits for your community, infrastructure gaps it closes and/or links to existing infrastructure, using your previous work in Step 2 (Table 1). To help you gather this information, we prepared a template table (Table 2) in the appendix. Disclaimer: Please remember that all Base4NFDI-funded services are still in development and may not be fully operational. Moreover, integration procedures and efforts can vary, 5 Steps to Base4NFDI Service Integration: A Guide for NFDI Consortia 3 depending on the service and your interests. Integration may e.g. mean engaging in shaping a service by providing community requirements, acting as an incubator, or other. Guiding Questions Here are questions we consider useful to assess integration pathways in NFDI consortia: ● Are consortium partners already actively involved in the basic service? ● Which consortium partners could be early adopters of a basic service, based on current requirements and challenges or available resources? ● Is there already a similar service in place? Would this service need to be replaced? What would be the steps and effort required to do so? ● Is there qualified personnel in the consortium staff to support integration of the basic service? ● Is there sufficient time and (coordinating) resources to (determine and) execute integration pathways for a specific service in your consortium? Step 5: Allocate Resources for Service Integration This fifth step is about estimating integration efforts and reserving necessary resources in order to actually integrate a Base4NFDI service. The task at hand is to map the assessed integration potential of each basic service to defined resources (personnel, technical, monetary) required for collaboration with the basic service teams (e.g. in an incubator project), and allocate them. Consider discussing with other consortia who already have resources, Task Areas or person months set aside for Base4NFDI-related activities. Activities to support the ongoing sustainability of services within the consortia and commitment to identifying operating models to some of these services should be a common effort of all NFDI consortia. In addition, this information may especially be helpful for the preparation of a prolongation proposal and could be integrated there. For support, adjustable text building blocks are provided by Base4NFDI. In case of interest, please contact the Base4NFDI Office (base4nfdi-offic[email protected].de). 5 Steps to Base4NFDI Service Integration: A Guide for NFDI Consortia 4