The UG DCC at the Mini-Conference on Open and FAIR practices in NES in May 2025

4TU.ResearchData, TDCC-NES, and the Open Science communities jointly organized a mini-conference in May 2025, to address discipline-specific challenges in the Natural and Engineering Sciences (NES) domain. The UG DCC was invited to participate in the event in Utrecht, where we provided insights on several themes regarding the sustainability of research software.

The main themes of the event were Funding Opportunities, FAIR Research Practices, and Open Scholarly Infrastructure. Each theme featured a dedicated panel discussion. In addition to panels, the program included pitches for new TDCC-NES project ideas, presentations, and workshops. Dr. Burcu Beygu, Research Data and Software Management expert of the UG Digital Competence Centre (UG DCC), was invited to speak in two sessions at the mini-conference in Utrecht.

Challenges exposed

The first was a project ideas matching session for the NWO TDCC-NES calls, which aimed to give potential project leaders the opportunity to share their ideas with a wider audience. Dr. Burcu Beygu was given the opportunity to reflect on her experience as the leader of the first TDCC-NES bottleneck project, Financial Aspects of Sustainable Research Software, highlighting key challenges and lessons learned:

• The first challenge was the inability to temporarily hire staff for the project. Since team members had full-time commitments elsewhere, delivering a one-year project with limited time dedication impacted its overall quality.
• The second challenge involved collaborating across institutions. Although collaboration is encouraged by TDCC-NES and NWO, limited availability and communication barriers made it difficult to meet project goals.
• Finally, the lack of project management support—especially around budgeting, HR, and legal procedures—posed a significant obstacle. Several project leaders expressed facing similar issues, making these challenges universally applicable. 

Panel discussion on funding practices

The second session was a panel discussion on funding to support Open and FAIR practices in NES. Panel members included Marta Teperek (OSNL Program Lead for FAIR Data), Joanne Yeomans (TDCC-NES Network Manager), Emmy Tsang (Director of Finance and Operations, Invest in Open Infrastructure), and Dr. Burcy Beygu herself.

The discussion surrounded examples where funding has enabled meaningful difference in enabling FAIR or Open practices in the NES domain, how can researchers, institutions, and infrastructure providers play a more active role in shaping funding priorities — particularly to support both technical and human aspects of Open and FAIR science, the lack of recognition and roles for research software developers in funding schemes, and what changes are needed at the organizational and funder level to support sustainable research software development and maintenance. 

The general conclusion was that while funding is important, the issue goes beyond the availability of funds. Rigid financial structures within institutions also need to change to recognize research software development as a legitimate and supported role.

Reflections on the mini-conference

Our highlights of the conference were the panel discussions on Open Scholarly Infrastructure and funding to support open and FAIR NES, as well as the sessions where new project ideas were pitched. We are grateful to the organizers of the event for inviting us to be a part of this, and we hope to continue contributing to the discussion on this topic in the future.