108th Helmholtz Open Science Newsletter

1. Advancing Research Assessment

The discussion about a reform of research assessment with the aim of evaluating research achievements in a more transparent, diverse, and quality-oriented manner continues to gain momentum.

An important milestone in this process is the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which advocates for abandoning the inappropriate use of journal-based metrics and promotes the fair and comprehensive assessment of scientific work. Five Helmholtz Centers (German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences Research (GFZ), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and Max Delbrück Center (MDC)) have signed DORA and are committed to the further development of their research assessment processes and criteria. On occasion of DORA’s 12th birthday “A Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations” will be launched with three online panel sessions in May 2025 for the global community.

Since 2022, the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) promotes development of the research assessment methods and processes that recognise the diverse outputs, practices, and activities that maximize the quality and impact of research. The Helmholtz Open Science Office, like the MDC, is now one of the signatory institutions and contributes to several of CoARA’s Working Groups. In addition, Mathijs Vleugel, Head of the Helmholtz Open Science Office, has been elected to coordinate the CoARA German National Chapter starting March 2025.

The Helmholtz Task Group Research Assessment has recently been set up to support the further development of research assessment at the Helmholtz Association. Its aim is to create a platform to identify and share quality-oriented approaches for research assessment, and advance their further development and implementation within Helmholtz.

4. Modular Reference Model for the Information Budget

The DFG-funded project Transform2Open has published the Modular Reference Model for the Information Budget (in German only). As part of various participatory formats, a preliminary study was carried out to explore how library budgets, third-party funding, and other financial resources for information provision can be strategically combined under the concept of an information budget in the context of open access. The publication summarizes the key findings of this process and describes the framework conditions and success factors for information budgets.

The model is based on preliminary work carried out by the focus group information budget of open-access.network and other stakeholders. It can be used both as a checklist for identifying relevant cost elements and as a tool for initial cost recording. Furthermore, it enables scientific institutions to assess the development status of their information budget and to develop it further in a targeted manner. The publication is accompanied by a table that includes the developed modules. It also offers the opportunity to enter cost information and make an initial assessment. The file serves as a generic starting point and can be adapted according to local needs.

5. SCOAP³ for Books: Sponsorship of Open Access Books Continues

SCOAP³ (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) is an international cooperation in the field of high-energy physics with the aim of converting traditional closed-access publications into open access. The SCOAP³ for Books initiative also provides financial support for the publication of monographs and textbooks. As the SCOAP³ consortium has now announced, almost 100 open access books have been published to date as part of the funding program. SCOAP³ for Books will be continued in 2025.

6. Retrospective: RDA-DE Conference 2025

The RDA-DE Conference 2025, organized by the Research Data Alliance Deutschland e.V in cooperation with the Helmholtz Open Science Office, took place at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences on February 18-19, 2025. The conference opened with a keynote speech on open science policy in France. The main topics of the conference were the use of research data and the presentation of the data competence centers funded by the BMBF.

The President of the Helmholtz Association presented the extensive activities in the Association to promote data-driven research. The “Helmholtz Information and Data Science Framework” was created in the Association across all research fields to strengthen expertise in dealing with research data. This structure, which is unique in Germany in the field of information and data science, networks experts, supercomputers, algorithms, data treasures, and services.

As was the case at the last RDA-DE conference, a presentation was also devoted to the topic of long-term archiving. In her presentation, Juliane Watson from the German Archaeological Institute drew attention to the fact that the topic of long-term archiving was given too little consideration in the design of the NFDI funding.

The presentation slides and the posters on display are available on the conference website. The venue and date for the RDA-DE Conference 2026 have already been set. The conference will take place on February 24-25, 2026, at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, as it has in previous years.

7. PIDs for Physical Objects: Workshop Showed Potentials

The DFG-funded project PID Network Germany organized a workshop in February 2025 that addressed the extension of the use of persistent identifiers (PIDs) to physical objects. The workshop focused on challenges and possibilities of using PIDs for e.g. biological sample material, drill core samples or cultural artifacts.

A wide range of presentations covered how physical objects are currently recorded in Germany, for example in the fields of catalysis research, plant genetics and crop research as well as archaeology. In addition, the importance of IGSNs (International Generic Sample Numbers) as PID for the scientific community was emphasized and their use for improving data availability and usability was illustrated. This was followed by intensive exchange formats on areas of application of PIDs, challenges and possible solutions. A particular focus was on the exchange of ideas for the development of a national PID roadmap. The event was multifaceted and offered plenty of time to gather information, network and exchange ideas. A summary and the contributions can be found in the project website.

The PID Network team also invites you to another event on May 7, 2025 in Hanover or online. This will focus on PIDs for academic events from the perspective of various stakeholders (program). The registration options can be found here.

8. Impressions from E-Science-Tage 2025

This year's E-Science-Tage took place from March 12 to 14, 2025 under the slogan “Research Data Management: Challenges in a Changing World”. As in previous years, the interdisciplinary conference on research data management (RDM) and open science was hosted at Heidelberg University and organized by the federal state initiative bwFDM with the participation of other institutions from Baden-Württemberg, including the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). This year's conference focused on the challenges of RDM in the face of changing technical, infrastructural and geopolitical conditions.

A varied program awaited the approximately 340 participants from Germany and abroad who took part on site and online: The first day featured workshops, presentations, and a keynote on data stewardship, while the second day began with a keynote on data-driven modeling of the Earth system, followed by a comprehensive poster session as an exclusive program item. Key topics were the impact of artificial intelligence, budget cuts, and uncertainties in legal requirements on RDM. The program also highlighted aspects of data literacy and the reuse of research data. Not surprisingly, the activities of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) were omnipresent. The conference concluded with a panel discussion on the future prospects and funding of research data management, which focused on the issue of data stewards as important specialists.

The projects PID Network Deutschland and PID4NFDI were represented with a joint presentation on the status quo and prospects of persistent identifiers (PIDs) in open science. (A conference report by the PID Network provides further insights into the conference.) The current funding period of the state initiative bwFDM runs until 2027. Therefore, next year it will certainly be possible to say again: “Nice here, but have you ever been to E-Science-Tage?”

Recommended Reading

Boehm, F., Euler, E., Klimpel, P., Rack, F., & Weitzmann, J. (Eds.). (2025). Creative Commons Public License (CCPL). Kommentar und Handbuch für die Rechtspraxis. Carl Grossmann Verlag. https://www.carlgrossmann.com/ccpl_kommentar/

Borgman, C. L., & Groth, P. (2025). From data creator to data reuser: distance matters. Harvard Data Science Review, accepted version. https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.35d32cfc

Christ, S., Fritzsch, B., Grossmann, Y. V., Kempf, D., Linxweiler, J., Löffler, F., Riedl, L., Thiele, J. P., Wagner, A. S., Zanon, L., Assmann, C., Brömmel, D., Caspart, R., Dogan, M., Fillinger, S., Frangenberg, J., Franke, M., Frey, A., Hagenberg, J., … Wittke, S. (2025). Code for Science: Bessere Forschung durch bessere Forschungssoftwarekompetenzen. Code for Science: Bessere Forschung durch bessere Forschungssoftwarekompetenzen, Hannover, 02.-04.12.2024. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14273367

Ervens, B., Carslaw, K. S., Koop, T., & Pöschl, U. (2025). Opinion: Improved scientific discourse and quality assurance by interactive open access publishing with community-based multi-stage open peer review in an open science landscape. EGUsphere. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-419

Hopkins, K., & Sanders, K. (2025). Open access, open infrastructures, and their funding: learning from histories to more effectively enhance diamond OA ecologies for books. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18284

Klebel, T., Traag, V., Grypari, I., Stoy, L., & Ross-Hellauer, T. (2025). The academic impact of Open Science: a scoping review. Royal Society Open Science, 12(3), 241248. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.241248

Riise, R. R., Schmidt, B., Lutz, J.-F., Bauin, S., & Tuuliniemi, A. (2025). Reflections on transformative agreements: from stagnant transitions to article quotas. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14718356

Stompor, T., Pampel, H., Boltze‐Fütterer, J., & Rusch, B. (2025). DeepGreen—A Data Hub for the Distribution of Scholarly Articles From Publishers to Open Access Repositories in Germany. Learned Publishing, 38(2), e70000. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.70000

Treadway, J., Labastida i Juan, I., Melinščak Zlodi, I., & Proudman, V. (2025). Building bridges to open access. Paths to institutional rights retention in Europe 2024. Project Retain. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15078315