One platform will not solve everything: How FID GEO strengthens Germany’s Open Science Landscape for the geosciences.

The Specialized Information Service for Geosciences (FID GEO) is a German Research Foundation (DFG)-funded initiative that has been serving the geoscience community in Germany for almost a decade. FID GEO provides essential publication services through its partner domain repositories GFZ Data Services (for research data and software) and GEO-LEOe-docs (for text publications). Beyond these repositories, FID GEO actively supports the digital transformation and supports researchers in adopting Open Science practices mainly through workshops, publications, conference contributions and active participation in topic-specific meetings. 

Collaboration is a cornerstone of FID GEO’s work. It engages closely with geoscientific societies, national infrastructures and initiatives such as the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), while also contributing to policy-making processes such as the planned German Research Data Act. Recognizing the inherently global nature of geosciences, FID GEO further aligns its activities with international developments, striving to synchronize national progress with global standards and best practices for data management and distribution. FID GEO acts as an interface between scientists, libraries, repositories and the world of digital data management and thus support the transformation of the publication culture in the geosciences at national and international level.

For many years, FID GEO has received feedback from researchers expressing a strong desire for a ‘single source’ platform to manage and share their increasingly large datasets, publications, and projects. At the same time, researchers often feel overwhelmed by the complexity and number of existing infrastructures. However, not only does a one-size-fits-all solution appear technically out of reach, it also faces issues in scalability and sustainable maintenance. A viable way forward is the widespread implementation of machine-readable (meta)data standards that also enable the connection between distributed data systems. Additional metadata properties enable persistent digital links between different research outputs and the unique identification of authors and institutions through persistent identifiers. Another significant challenge within the research landscape is the often competing nature of infrastructures, driven by limited funding opportunities and overlapping goals. Through its extensive network and active collaborations, FID GEO addresses these challenges by guiding researchers through this complex landscape and demonstrates practical ways to make their scientific outputs visible, reusable, and aligned with the FAIR and Open Science principles.

This presentation will share best practices, lessons learned, and future directions for fostering a collaborative and open research environment. FID GEO envisions a geoscience community empowered by shared data and cooperative infrastructures, better equipped to address pressing global challenges.