nfdi.software aims to create a central marketplace to improve access to NFDI research data and software, addressing the needs of various scientific disciplines for sustainable research software use and development. It will link and coordinate independent developments within a federated data infrastructure, enhancing networking and contextualisation of research software.
Goals of the initialisation phase
The nfdi.software proof-of-concept service includes a website and an API, providing an interface to search and discover research software via the NFDI. Identification of needs and community specific requirements will be collected in collaboration with consortia and basic services through workshops, discussions and prototyping. The 'Prototype for Integration' will feature functionalities for harvesting and retrieving information, offering detailed software data along with related publications, people, and projects. Existing tools like the Research Software Directory, bio.tools, the Research Software Ecosystem, Betty´s Research Engine and physics.tools will be integrated, and an advanced search and recommender system will be added. Various metadata vocabularies will be explored and discussed to develop a common cross-sector vocabulary. Metadata efforts like Knowledge Graphs and Jupyter4NFDI will be evaluated, with results documented in a concept and design report for feedback and improvement. The integration with IAM4NFDI is also planned to foster synergies.
Project plan
