Beyond Symbolic Commitment
FAIR research data management (RDM) is widely recognised as a prerequisite for transparent, reusable, and high-quality research. Yet, translating FAIR and Open Science principles into everyday research practice remains difficult. While many initiatives focus on infrastructures, standards, and tools, less attention has been paid to instruments that create shared values, trust, ownership, and coordinated action across institutions and research communities.
Within the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), NFDI4Earth developed the FAIRness and Openness Commitment¹ as a voluntary, community-driven instrument to foster cultural change towards FAIR and Open RDM practices. Building on this approach, FAIRagro adapted the commitment to the specific context of agrosystem sciences. Rather than functioning as certification schemes, both commitments are designed as living frameworks and “conversation starters”: they make shared values visible, support trust-building between communities and NFDI consortia, and provide a common reference point for advancing FAIR RDM. At the time of submission, the NFDI4Earth and FAIRagro Commitments had attracted 13 and 8 organisational signatories, respectively.
In March 2026, FAIRagro and NFDI4Earth organised a joint workshop with representatives of signatory organisations². The workshop explored how the commitments are perceived and implemented in practice, what challenges arise when moving from strategic endorsement to everyday research workflows, and how NFDI consortia can better support this transition. The analysis focused on three organisational contexts — universities and universities of applied sciences, research institutes, and networks or scientific societies — and structured lessons learned, challenges, and proposed activities along four fields of action: Governance & Policy, Training & Capacity Building, Infrastructure & Tools, and Community, Culture & Communication.
The workshop showed that the commitments fulfil different but complementary functions depending on organisational context and RDM maturity. They can serve as entry points for governance-level conversations, as instruments for consolidating existing RDM activities, and as shared language for connecting institutional actors with community-driven NFDI activities. At the same time, participants identified a persistent gap between formal commitment and practical uptake. Key challenges include limited incentives and enforcement mechanisms, the complexity of the RDM service landscape, difficulties in reaching researchers beyond early adopters, and the need for more practical, researcher-oriented guidance.
Successful approaches included embedding FAIR principles into PhD regulations and curricula, establishing local data stewardship structures, integrating FAIR-related criteria into institutional reporting and evaluation processes, promoting suitable repositories and tools, and strengthening peer-learning formats. A central outcome was that commitments should not remain static declarations, but serve as a basis for active communities of practice. Participants expressed a clear need to develop annotated, researcher-facing versions of the commitments and to share concrete implementation plans across institutions. Such measures would support cross-institutional exchange and ultimately strengthen peer learning as a driver of FAIR RDM culture.
Furthermore, workshop participants agreed that NFDI consortia should make stronger strategic use of their collective position to address systemic levers that individual institutions cannot influence alone, including funder requirements, journal policies, incentive structures, and orientation within the growing RDM service ecosystem. It also highlights AI- and LLM-based guidance mechanisms as a potential future pathway for helping researchers navigate FAIR infrastructures, metadata standards, and workflows.
Overall, the workshop illustrates how community-rooted commitments can help move FAIR RDM from symbolic endorsement towards operational cultural change. Their value lies not in the signature alone, but in enabling trust, shared responsibility, peer learning, and coordinated momentum for advancing FAIR data culture across research communities.
¹ Commitment webpages: NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment: https://nfdi4earth.de/2coordinate/cultural-change/nfdi4earth-commitment; FAIRagro FAIRness and Openness Commitment: https://fairagro.net/en/commitment/
² Workshop participants represented signatory organisations from different institutional contexts, including universities and universities of applied sciences — Technische Universität Dresden, Freie Universität Berlin – Department of Earth Sciences, University of Münster – Faculty of Geosciences, Bochum University of Applied Sciences, and Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development; research institutes — Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops, Julius Kühn-Institut, Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences GFZ, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry – Department of Biogeochemical Integration, and Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy; and the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe as a scientific network.