The 34^th Diversity Workbench Workshop is the next event you should not miss. As usual, it will take place at the IT Center of the Bavarian Natural History Collections (SNSB), in Munich.

This time, the main discussion will be around the tools available in the Diversity Workbench suitable for research groups and projects in the field of ecology. Scenarios related to GFBio, MOD-CO and ARAMOB will also be addressed.

The workshop itself is free, but a fee of 15 Euros will be charged to cover the coffee-break and lunch. As the number of participants is limited, make sure that you register as soon as possible by sending an email to Wolfgang Reichert (reichert[at]bsm.mwn.de).

For further information, link to the event webpage and learn about the program, venue, timetable, what to bring along, etc. The workshop’s language is German.

Viel Spaß!

“A generic workflow for effective sampling of environmental vouchers with UUID assignment and image processing” is the latest article published with the support of the GFBio project. The authors present a workflow for sampling biological and environmental vouchers in the field, while simultaneously generating universally identifiable data. GFBio importance is highlighted as counsellor and facilitator towards data management best practices.

Enjoy your reading!

GFBio has contributed to the recently published Knowledge Exchange (KE) report about the evolving landscape of Federated Research Data Infrastructures (FRDI). This document draws from the work by the Knowledge Exchange Research Data expert group which recognized the need of better understanding the dynamics/consequences of ‘federating’ research data infrastructures. It also follows the KE report from 2011 elaborated in response to the European Commission ‘Riding the wave’ call for the development of an international framework towards a collaborative data infrastructure.

The report is based on a collection of interviews with experts leading or managing sixteen FRDI's in all six KE partner countries i.e. Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK (table 1).

The analysis of such interviews provided nine main conclusions relatively to a variety of factors: definition, characteristics, and drivers for the emergency of FRDIs, funding situation, users role, complexity of research environments, challenges and impacts, and the importance of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

This study, authored by Stéphane Goldstein, is available since November 2017. It surely adds momentum to the transition towards data driven research and is a good starting point for anyone interested in understanding the present motivation in pushing forward a federated data infrastructure and implications thereof.