Christian Hauschke
After working in several academic libraries in a wide range of positions, I started to coordinate the TIB's VIVO activities as a member of the Open Science Lab in 2016. Since then I participated in diverse activities and projects around open research information, persistent identifiers (PIDs), linked (open) data, open science, and the open source research information system VIVO. I'm leading the Lab Group Open Research Information that was founded in 2020.
Sessions
Scientific instruments are essential research assets, yet they remain largely invisible in the persistent identifier (PID) ecosystem. "Materials Instruments" addresses this gap by developing an open infrastructure that improves the discoverability, interoperability, and reuse of scientific instruments in materials science while strengthening FAIR research infrastructures.
"Materials Instruments" is a new service of the FID Materials Science (Specialised Information Service Materials Science) aiming at the community of researchers in the materials sciences.. The project allowed collection and distribution of instrument metadata from heterogeneous sources and prepares them for integration into the PID ecosystem. A central component is the planned assignment of DOIs to instrument records, enabling reliable citation and cross-linking between instruments, publications, datasets, and research institutions. This talk presents practical implementation steps and lessons learned, including challenges related to metadata aggregation, licensing, governance, and community adoption when integrating instruments into the broader PID ecosystem.
Amid debates about the credibility of academia - sparked by scandals involving fake conferences – we proposed creating an infrastructure to improve transparency around academic events. The aim was to establish a registry that records conferences, workshops, and similar formats using structured metadata and assigns DOIs, enabling clear identification, citation, linking, and long-term discoverability. The ConfIDent project launched in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when widespread cancellations, postponements, and rapid transitions to online meetings exposed weaknesses in existing event documentation. While these developments highlighted the need for reliable records that preserve event information as details change over time, early implementation revealed limitations in the chosen technical platform, including usability challenges, limited interoperability, and reliance on manual data entry, which slowed adoption. Drawing on these challenging lessons, but ongoing community support, we are now preparing a redesigned infrastructure to relaunch the registry sustainably.