A motivated team from FAIRagro was present at this year’s meeting of the Gesellschaft für Pflanzenbauwissenschaften e.V. (GPW) from 4.10. to 6.10.2023. Under the motto “Digital tools, big data, modeling and sensing methods for sustainable and climate smart crop and grassland systems” there were exciting presentations and discussions on the topic of agricultural systems research – and a joint workshop of the GPW working group “Crop Physiology and growth models” and FAIRagro on the topic “FAIR Research Data Management”.
The workshop was hosted by FAIRagro partners ATB (Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy), ZB MED (Life Sciences Information Centre), DSSC at ZALF (Data Steward Service Center / Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Land Research) and JKI (Federal Research Institute for Cultivated Plants).
The aim was to get in touch with the research community, to sensitize them to the various aspects of research data management (RDM) and to get them enthusiastic about it. It was also intended to identify potential barriers and problems in the generation and provision of FAIR data and to develop initial ideas for solutions on how these could be overcome. After a short introduction to the basics of FAIR research data management, questions along the data use cycle were worked on in parallel in 4 groups. During the group work it became clear to the participants that all steps of the data use cycle are interdependent.
The planning of the data collection is therefore already essential for its later usability, both in terms of structure and quality as well as in terms of completeness and scope of the collected metadata. Also of fundamental importance are
- training of all persons involved
- a functioning institutional data management
- clarification of data protection issues such as data origin and data usage rights
- standardization of formats, documentation and experimental plans
- the use of open file formats, and
- ensuring accessibility
The presentation is published by Zenodo and can be accessed at the following address: 10.5281/zenodo.10014367
The next GPW meeting will be held in Halle, Germany, September 23-25, 2025 – we’d love to come back.
