Helpdesk

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The NFDI4Microbiota Helpdesk Team Is Waiting for Your Questions! Get in Touch!

Our Helpdesk team is here to support you with questions or issues related to data management, data analysis, and any aspect of the NFDI4Microbiota consortium, including our services, outreach and community activities.

Who Can Contact Us?

Anyone — from students and researchers to data stewards and beyond — is welcome to get in touch, free of charge. We especially welcome questions from those working with microbial (omics) data, regardless of organism (bacteria, archaea, eukaryotic microorganisms, viruses), environment (e.g. soil, aquatic, host-associated or plant), or data type (e.g. nucleic acid sequences, functional genomics, image data).

How to Reach Us?

Please use the contact form below or email us at helpdesk@nfdi4microbiota.de. By emailing us, you agree to our privacy policy linked below. We will respond via email, or if your request is more complex, we may offer a one-on-one consultation with one of our data stewards.

Topics We Support

We can help you with a wide range of topics, including:

  • NFDI4Microbiota services: Do you want to use our services but you don't know how to? We answer your questions about our services such as the open data storage platform ARUNA, the microbial strain database StrainInfo, the virus database VirJenDB, the cloud-based workflow manager CloWM with best practice bioinformatic workflows on our Knowledge Base.
  • Data Management Plans (DMPs): Which template to use? What DMP tools are available? How to set up a DMP (using the Research Data Management Organiser (RDMO))?
  • Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs): How to choose an ELN? How to then implement it? How to work with eLabFTW or eLabJournal?
  • Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs): What SOPs are currently for managing research data? Where to find protocols for collecting microbial data?
Collaborative Support Across NFDI Consortia

Our Helpdesk works closely with thematically related NFDI consortia (DataPLANT, FAIRagro, GHGA, NFDI4Biodiversity, NFDI4Bioimage, NFDI4Chem, NFDI4Earth, NFDI4Health, and NFDI4Immuno) to provide comprehensive and coordinated support. Through this collaboration, we share best practices, resources, and expertise to ensure efficient and effective assistance across disciplines.



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FAQs

NFDI is a shortcut for ‚Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur‘, in English: ‚National research data infrastructure‘. The non-profit Association German National Research Data Infrastructure (Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI) e.V.), based in Karlsruhe, was founded in 2020 to coordinate the activities for establishing a national research data infrastructure in Germany. The association in which “valuable data from science and research are systematically accessed, networked and made usable in a sustainable and qualitative manner for the entire German science system” [NFDI e.V.]. The Federal Government and all 16 German states jointly support the NFDI and are also the founding members of the Association German National Research Data Infrastructure. More information can be found on the website of the NFDI e.V. In this video the DFG explains the aims and goals of the NFDI initiative.
For more details: NFDI Homepage.

NFDI4Microbiota is one of the 30 consortia of the German NFDI (National research Data Infrastructure) initiative, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft e.V. (DFG). The vision of the consortium is to support microbiology researchers (including bacteriology, virology, protistology, mycology and parasitology) to standardize the translation of research data easily into a deep understanding of microbial species and their interactions on a molecular level. The mission of the NFDI4Microbiota consortium is to be the central hub in Germany for supporting the microbiology community with access to data, analysis services, data/metadata standards and training. Learn more about the work program here.
For more details: About NFDI4Microbiota.

You can stay up to date on our work via this website or our mailing list". By signing up for our mailing list, you will receive a quarterly newsletter and further news from our consortium. The newsletter will also be available here.

There are several ways to participate in the work of NFDI4Microbiota. You can become a participant, an ambassador, or join our events, like our community workshops. The ambassador program is an excellent opportunity for young researchers to get involved and actively influence the work of our consortium.

We are right now working on our future application procedure for new participants. Therefore, we cannot accept new participants at the moment. Please regularly check out the participation page on our web portal, or subscribe to our mailing list to stay up-to-date.

The NFDI4Microbiota ambassadors are preferably local staff and especially young researchers (PhD students and Postdocs) from participating and non-participating institutes. We want to train our ambassadors to support FAIR data implementation in terms of Open Science in their research group and institution and are experts that can be consulted on NFDI4Microbiota topics.
Learn more about the ambassador program.

You can register via this link.

Research Data Management (RDM) is a series of steps and methods which aim to make research data usable over the long term. These steps include planning, data documentation, data quality control, data processing, data analysis, data sharing, data publishing, digital preservation, data discovery, and data reuse. Soon we will provide more information on that in a content hub.

In general, everybody can take part in the training courses offered on our website, if not indicated differently. Some courses are organized for specific groups or institutions only but in that case are indicated as such (closed).

Detailed information on different training courses can be found in our training calendar.