OSTrails was present at the International Data Week 2025 (IDW2025), showcasing its position as a leading innovator of practical, automated Open Science solutions. With two well-received posters and a contribution to the conference’s Data Management Plan (DMP) session, the project highlighted how its integrated approach is transforming data management from an administrative obligation into a seamless part of the research process.

With 41 partners and 25 pilots spanning national, thematic, and European infrastructures, OSTrails is coordinating one of the largest efforts in research data management interoperability.

OSTrails in RDA/IDW at glance

• ~40 attendees from research institutions worldwide
• 2 posters showcasing researcher-centered and technical perspectives
• Global DMP platforms collaborating through OSTrails' API framework
• 1 consensus: researchers want automation, not administration

In conversation with attendees

The two OSTrails posters drew steady attention throughout the conference, each highlighting a different dimension of the project's approach.

Anca Hienola’s poster, “From Bureaucracy to Usability: How OSTrails Simplifies Open Science,” focused on the researcher journey showcasing how OSTrails connects machine-actionable DMPs (maDMPs), FAIRness assessment, and Scientific Knowledge Graphs to create a seamless, automated research workflow. The visual demonstration of how automation reduces administrative burden while improving research quality sparked genuine discussions about adoption in institutional settings.

Andres Tabima's poster took a complementary technical perspective, presenting OSTrails' federated architecture and the challenges of achieving interoperability at scale. With 41 partners and 25 pilots spanning disciplines and infrastructures, the poster demonstrated how the Interoperability Reference Architecture and Plan-Track-Assess framework enable coordination across diverse RDM tools while preserving domain-specific autonomy. The presentation of the emerging OSTrails Commons, which serves as a shared environment for services, methods, and training, resonated particularly with infrastructure providers interest and ambition regarding long-term sustainability and federation with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Together, the posters illustrated OSTrails' dual focus: making research workflows easier for individual scientists while building the technical infrastructure to support interoperable, FAIR-aligned science at scale. The visualisation of the link between researcher workflows, automation, and FAIR outputs helped bridge the gap between policy and practice across both presentations.

The visual link between researcher workflows, automation, and FAIR outputs helped bridge the gap between policy and practice, leading to discussions on how to implement these mechanisms within institutional systems.

Challenging the Status Quo on maDMPs

Approximately 40 researchers, data stewards, and infrastructure providers gathered at the maDMPs  session to learn and advance how computers can read, update, and integrate maDMPs into research workflows automatically.

Anca Hienolaopenly stated that “DMPs in their current form are useless and bureaucratic.”

During the session, Marek Suchanek and Andres Tabima from OSTrails co-chairs of the maDMP groups, presented the project’s vision for machine-actionable DMPs that evolve dynamically as research progresses. The session also featured progress updates from other DMP platforms of the project (About - OSTrails) as well as DMPTool (US), and DMP Assistant (Canada), demonstrating the global momentum behind API implementation.

The exchange underscored a growing consensus: researchers want automation, not administration. OSTrails’ approach, embedding DMPs directly into scientific workflows and linking them to data repositories and FAIRness tools, was recognised as a concrete step towards that goal. The session also prompted important discussions about DMP quality, reusability, and how to balance technical infrastructure improvements with making DMPs genuinely valuable to researchers.

OSTrails Moving Forward – What's Next

OSTrails will deploy its DMP evaluation service in 2026, enabling semi-automated assessment of DMP quality and interoperability. The maDMP API Working Group will continue developing technical specifications, with multiple platforms piloting implementations throughout 2025. This work informs and supports the maintenance of our  established RDA output, the DMP Common Standard.

The enthusiasm at RDA/IDW2025 suggests the research community is ready to make the shift from static compliance documents to dynamic, researcher-centred tools that support scientific work. We are looking forward to sharing what this looks like in the next RDA Plenary!

 Written by: Anca I. Hienola, PhD & Andres Tabima

Read the Interview with the Thematic Pilot for Physics to discover the latest updates on OSTrails pilot studies. Explore pilots progress in integrating open science principles and advancing research assessment. This month we had the pleasure of speaking with Renaud Duyme (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, France) and Majid Ounsy (SOLEIL Synchrotron, France). 

"Within the OSTrails project, our main goal objective is to enhance access and discovery of datasets generated by scientists in Photon and Neutron facilities. We aim to increase the visibility and reuse of these datasets across multiple scientific domains by integrating our data repositories with external tools and services, such as Data Management Plans and Scientific Knowledge Graphs."

-Can you briefly introduce your organisations? How does they contribute to EOSC?  

The Photon and Neutron Open Science Cluster (PaNOSC) provides the international scientific community with unique experiment tools to observe materials and living matter. PaNOSC is a European science cluster grouping multiple research facilities. PaNOSC is a candidate node in the EOSC federation.

For OSTrails, 2 institutions represent PaNOSC: the ESRF (Grenoble, France) and SOLEIL (Paris, France). Both are photon facilities hosting synchrotrons, often described as giant microscopes. A synchrotron "films" the position and motion of atoms in condensed and living matter and reveals the structure of matter in all its beauty and complexity. It provides unrivalled opportunities for scientists in the exploration of materials and living matter in a very wide variety of fields: chemistry, material physics, archaeology and cultural heritage, structural biology and medical applications, environmental sciences, information science and nanotechnologies.

The ESRF is the world's brightest synchrotron and is part of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI landmark). SOLEIL is a French national Research Infrastructure. The users of the ESRF and SOLEIL synchrotrons come from universities and laboratories from all over the world.

-What are you most excited about in OSTrails? What are you looking forward to?   

The OSTrails project is a great opportunity for us to continue integrating open science and FAIR concepts in Photon and Neutrons facilities.

-How is planning, tracking and assessing research being realised in your scientific domain?

Here is a typical workflow in a PaNOSC facility: a scientist sends us a proposal to perform an experiment in our facility. After selection, we grant access to our instruments and schedule an experiment session. During a session, datasets are generated and referenced in our data catalogs. Our librarians then track scientific articles mentioning these experiments and datasets. Datasets have an embargo period (3 years for ESRF) before being open access.

Datasets are key assets of scientific publications. We need to ensure that the datasets produced in our facilities can be properly discovered, used, cited, and finally even reused by other scientists.

Our community is developing the Photon and Neutron Experiment Technique (PaNET) vocabulary. This vocabulary defines a list of specific experimental observation techniques used in our facilities (for example: “x-ray diffraction”, “small angle scattering” ...). It gives us a generic way to annotate datasets in our repositories (ex: ESRF's Data Catalogue). ESRF is also minting dataset DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) with DataCite. We also annotate DataCite metadata.

PUMA (Publication and User experiment metadata Analyser) is an internal application available in a few PaNOSC facilities. PUMA provides standard instrument dashboards and search features. It is fed by the facility library catalog and the user office proposal/grant system. Multiple facets are involved: publications, proposals/grants, instruments, scholarly journals, scientists, institutions (laboratories, universities), datasets. These facets, when linked as entities, provide a Scientific Knowledge Graph (SKG). This SKG allows us to better track and understand science produced by our facility.

-Can you provide some details on your pilot's main actors, services and priorities? How will your pilot adopt the results of OSTrails?

Our OSTrails pilot will involve the following services: ESRF’s Data Catalog, PUMA and DSWizard DMP Tool.

We would like to report on the quality of our datasets. This assessment can be done in various workflows including the Data Managment Plan (DMP) evaluation process, when a DMP is mentioning one of our datasets.

We also want to showcase how we can enhance and standardise the exchanges of metadata related to our datasets between these services. Typical elements we would like to exchange are publication/dataset citation links and publication/grant citation links. The SKG-IF will be used for these data exchanges.

-Ongoing activities and Next Steps?

ESRF is updating internal instrument data workflow to plug and output PaNET techniques in the metadata of our data portal datasets and DataCite DOIs. Work has been done to push missing information to DataCite DOIs (license, affiliations, grant...). ESRF is involved in the delivery of the SKG-IF API.

SOLEIL is currently adapting its internal webservices (user office and library systems) to set up the PUMA application. SOLEIL is evaluating the DMP platform: DSWizard.

For the next steps, ESRF would like to use the OSTrails FAIR assessment IF. We will focus on the metadata quality of our datasets. This work will be done with the ESRF Data Catalog team, the FAIRsharing team and the DSWizard team for the ESRF local DSWizard instance.

Explore the National Pilot Interview from Portugal to discover the latest updates on the OSTrails pilot studies. Dive into their national activities and learn about their progress promoting the use of machine-actionable DMPs, enhancing the FAIRness of digital objects stored in their repositories, and strengthening interoperability among RDM services. This month, we had the pleasure of speaking with Pedro Príncipe, Filipa Pereira and André Vieira from the University of Minho and Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

"Through the OSTrails pilot, we expect to strengthen our institutional and national research ecosystems by advancing the implementation of machine-actionable DMPs, improving FAIRness of digital objects deposited in our data repositories, and fostering interoperability across RDM services. These developments will help us deliver more efficient, integrated, and trustworthy infrastructures, while embedding Open Science and FAIR principles into research practices."

The annual Shared RDM project meeting took place at Graz University of Technology from 23–24 September 2025, bringing together Austrian partners to reflect on the project’s progress and its future beyond the official funding period. Around 40 participants from various Austrian Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) were present.

A key highlight of the meeting was an in-depth presentation of the EU project OSTrails, whose mission closely aligns with Shared RDM's mission of creating sustainable, collaborative infrastructures for research data management (RDM). OSTrails introduces innovative approaches to enhance the Plan-Track-Assess stages of research outputs and offers a valuable perspective on how Shared RDM's outcomes can be linked with efforts in the wider European landscape. 

The presentations emphasised the Interoperability Frameworks, Pilots, and the Data Management Plan (DMP) tool DAMAP illustrating their contributions to other European initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

The presenters from OSTrails included:

- Ka Yee Suvini Lai (TU Wien), who introduced the overall OSTrail’s project and its goals.

- Daniel Spichtinger (UniWien), who discussed the Pilots activities, engaging national stakeholders at this Shared RDM event.

- Valentin Futterer (TU Wien) and Laura Thaci (TU Graz), who covered the latest and upcoming developments of DAMAP.

- Tomasz Miksa (TU Wien), the technical lead of WPx, who provided in-depth details on DAMAP and its role in OSTrails.

Key Takeaways

• Shared vision: Both projects push for sustainable RDM collaboration beyond project timelines.

• Clearer picture of OSTrails: The Shared RDM participants were able to understand how OSTrails will fit their use-cases via the three fundamental pillars and the Commons.

• DAMAP tool: Demonstrated as a practical, user-friendly DMP solution supporting FAIR and interoperable research data.

• The Pilots and their impact:

• National pilots: 15 countries co-design practical, local RDM solutions.

• Thematic pilots: 8 domains tailor DMPs, enrich knowledge graphs, and define FAIR rules.

• Horizon Europe pilot: Scales FAIR assessment across flagship EU projects.

Quote

“OSTrails is entering a transformative phase, with pilots turning technical developments into impact. For Austria, DAMAP plays a central role in making DMPs machine-actionable and advancing the DMP Interoperability Framework—an essential step towards federating capabilities for EOSC Nodes.”

-Tomasz Miksa (TU Wien)