Data Competency is a key feature for all researchers. It doesn’t matter in which research area you are (mainly) involved – additionally research is not bound to one scientific field, interdisciplinary approaches are more than ever essential for discoveries. Therefore we see a good overlap of NFDI4Objects with its material focused approach and the Rhine-Ruhr Center for Scientific Data Literacy.

The Rhine-Ruhr Center for Scientific Data Literacy is an initiative funded by the German Federal ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and the European Union. We are a consortium of nine institutions in the Rhine-Ruhr area including universities, research institutions, and universities of applied science. The overarching goal of the DKZ.2R is to reduce data-related hurdles in research and support a hollistic, methodological data literacy in the areas of data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning, high performance computing, and research data management.

Particularly in data science and research data management, there is a large variety of existing projects and efforts to support scientists in their work with research data. Therefore, another goal of the DKZ.2R is to connect with relevant initiatives like NFDI or fdm.nrw and to bundle and advertise their relevant services and events and thus to guide researchers in their search for information and support. This ensures that existing structures are used efficiently and that we can identify where complementing offers are needed.

Since the project launch we have strengthened relations with different NFDI consortia, as well as other projects in the area of research data management (e.g. fdm.nrw). At the Community Meeting of NFDI4Objects we aim to further extend our network and exchange ideas and experiences with initiatives dealing with research data management and by that take another step towards supporting a hollistic, methodological data literacy.