Interoperability and Architecture Requirements Analysis and Metadata Standardization for a Research Data Infrastructure in Catalysis

The National Research Data Infrastructure for Catalysis-Related Sciences (NFDI4Cat) is one of the disciplinary consortia formed within the German national research data infrastructure (NFDI), an effort undertaken by the German federal and state governments to advance the digitalization of all scientific research data within the German academic system in accordance with the FAIR principles. This work reports on initial outcomes from the NFDI4Cat project. The data value chain in catalysis research is analysed, and architecture and interoperability requirements are identified by conducting user interviews, collecting competency questions, and exploring the landscape of semantic artefacts. Methods from agile software development are employed to collect, organize, and present the collected requirements; workflows are annotated on the basis of metadata standards for research data provenance, by which requirements for domain ontologies in catalysis are deduced.