On September 28–29, 2026, the fifth annual Data Stewardship in Germany Community Meeting (DSgG, formerly ‘Data Stewardship goes Germany’) took place at the University of Cologne.
Under the motto “DSgG - from going to growing”, The meeting brought together a diverse community of people working in or interested in research data management, including researchers, data stewards, librarians, and service providers. The programme featured a range of formats, including presentations, Ignite Talks, a poster session, and workshops.
The German national OSTrails pilot organised one of these workshops, entitled “From Planning to Working: Using OSTrails interoperability frameworks to connect RDMO and electronic lab notebooks”. During the 90-minutes workshop Fabian Fink, Patrick Jüptner, Sabine Schönau, and Dominik Schmitz, all from the University Library at RWTH Aachen University, first provided an overview of OSTrails’ work and vision, the Research Data Management Organiser (RDMO), a platform for managing data management plans (DMPs), as well as two electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs): eLabFTW and Chemotion ELN.
During the hands-on part of the workshop, participants had the opportunity to test the tools, discuss how DMPs and ELNs could be connected, and provide feedback.
The German national OSTrails pilot aims to transfer relevant information between RDMO and the respective ELNs and vice versa by using the machine-actionable data management plan (maDMP) format. This approach serves as a prototype for enabling interoperability between DMP and ELN tools.
