This page is dedicated to veterinary medicine. There is also a page on human medicine.

In veterinary medicine, a wide variety of research data is generated, for example protein data, genomic data, cell growth data, expression data of cellular structures, microscopy and X-ray images, animal disease data and questionnaires. The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) does not provide any subject-specific guidelines on the handling of research data in veterinary medicine; consequently, the general DFG checklist for research data serves as the guideline for this field. Currently, veterinary research is focused, for example, on investigating behavioural and stress responses to understand – and improve models for – infectious diseases in animals. In addition, research groups at the Freie Universität Berlin (German only) are investigating a holistic approach to soil-transmitted helminths. Furthermore, various basic analytical research projects in all pre-clinical and clinical fields are underway at veterinary faculties across Germany. Extensive clinical studies are underway in small animal clinics, for example at LMU Munich on chronic diseases in dogs and cats, which serve to advance the fundamental understanding of these diseases and the development of improved therapies.

The diversity of these research topics is united by the need to manage research data responsibly, sustainably, in a structured manner and efficiently. In line with this background, the German national research data infrastructure (Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur, NFDI) is organized into consortia and can offer you support on various topics relating to research data management (RDM) . No dedicated NFDI consortium is directly related to veterinary medicine, but selected life sciences consortia, e.g.

• NFDI4BIOIMAGE (microscopy data and images from biological processes or analyses)
• NFDI4Health (covering, among other things, anonymization strategies for data that is subject to data protection regulations (e.g. livestock owner data))
• FAIRagro (data from the agricultural sciences and associated disciplines)
• NFDI4Microbiota (microbiological data; highlights on metagenome research)

offer you specialist knowledge on various RDM topics and come with expert-supported helpdesks.

In the following, we present offers and services in the field of veterinary research data management. Is there an offer missing? Do you feel that certain connections are not quite accurately represented, or do you have any questions? We look forward to hearing from you via email.

In veterinary research, external data and resources are key pillars of basic research as well as of livestock and healthcare research.

Research data and animal health data are often relevant across national borders and must frequently be considered in conjunction with human medicine. The following portals provide resources for research in the form of biological materials, classifications or up-to-date data on animal diseases and health, as well as external research data.

• The German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures maintains a very extensive standardized collection, which is available for research purposes.
• The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control offers, among other things, up-to-date information on zoonoses, training programs and conferences.
• The Federal Research Institute for Animal Health (Friedrich Löffler Institut, FLI) lists the latest news on animal diseases, the FLI Biobank (cells, viruses), a list of reference laboratories for animal diseases, a gene bank on farm animals, and a collection of methods related to laboratory diagnostics.
• OpenAgrar (page in German only) is the publication server of the FLI, the Thünen Institute and other federal ministerial institutes. It contains more than 900 entries related to primary and processed research data.
• The StrainInfo tool, supported by NFDI4Microbiota, provides unique identifiers for microorganisms.
• The Thünen Institute’s Agricultural Atlas (page in German only) offers comprehensive atlases that, among other things, depict livestock farming in Germany at the municipal level.

Services that offer you dedicated support on managing your research data are available from various sources, depending on your field of research. Please also refer to our General RDM topics section for further information. The GFBio service portal for biological and ecological data supports you in creating data management plans, in visualizing data and in finding data from catalogues of museums, botanical gardens, microorganisms and cell cultures.

The timely submission of applications for or notification of animal experiments, their careful documentation, the collected data’s storage, as well as reporting obligations relating to permits are also integral parts of research data management. The legal basis for this is the animal welfare and laboratory animal ordinance (Tierschutz-Versuchstierordnung) (page in German only). Here, the federal states are responsible; in Saxony, for example, the Saxony state directorate for the interior, social affairs and health (Landesdirektion Sachsen für Inneres, Soziales und Gesundheit) (page in German only) is responsible. Universities usually have animal welfare officers, who act as the first point of contact.

The publication of primary and processed research data has led to the creation and interpretation of scientific articles. As this plays a part in implementing the principles of Good Scientific Practice, it is worth pursuing when working with veterinary data. Currently, publishing veterinary research data as supplements to text publications is the most common form of publishing veterinary research work in Germany. Publishing primary research data as independent publications in repositories with references in complementary publications (data availability statements) are not yet widespread in university veterinary research in Germany, although this best meets the requirements of FAIR, transparent and funding-compliant data management.

In the strict sense, no subject-specific repositories are available for publishing data from veterinary medicine. Instead, the selection of a suitable repository can be made on the basis of various criteria, e.g. by data type. Examples of repositories for common types of veterinary data are listed below:

• Microscopy data: the Bio Image Archive or the Image Data Resource
• Flow cytometry data: the Flow Repository
• Gene sequence data: the ENA (European Nucleotide Archive) (nucleotide sequencing information) or the NCBI GenBank

Repositories that publish interdisciplinary research data, in some cases with a technical and/or content review (data curation), are, for example:

• Figshare – individual data submission or direct transfer of data from partner journals (e.g. Springer Nature), no data curation
• Dryad – individual data submission against a small fee, data is curated
• Zenodo – individual data submission, no data curation

If your institution has an institutional, interdisciplinary data repository, such as Open Data at LMU Munich or OPARA for some Saxon universities, these can usually also be used to publish research data. However, wherever plausible, it is advisable to use discipline-specific (e.g. data-type-specific) repositories first; these generally ensure that your data is more easily discoverable thanks to extensive contextual information provided via metadata fields. The Friedrich Löffler Institute and other partner institutes operate an institutional repository called OpenAgrar (page in German only), where you can find numerous primary research data. If you are affiliated with the institute, you can also publish your data there. Researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, are increasingly publishing primary research data in the institutional repository Phaidra.

Distributing primary research data across different repositories according to type and scope can be beneficial. It is also often possible to (long-term) archive research data via institutional repositories or data archives with restricted user-specific access without publishing it at the same time. This can be relevant, for example, in the case of data that is subject to data protection requirements for which no consent has been obtained from the relevant animal owners.

The publication of primary research data can also take place independently of a scientific article, either as a standalone dataset or in conjunction with a data paper (an interpretation-free, detailed description of a usually extensive dataset). Data papers can be published in so-called data journals such as Scientific Data, if the primary data related to the articles is published and archived in repositories. The latter form of publication is well established in especially international veterinary research, partly with German involvement, as these examples illustrate.

Information on other aspects of your research data management can be found in the General RDM topics section, where these are presented in an interdisciplinary manner.

Recommendations on the handling of research data – selected institutes and universities:

• Guidelines and recommended reading (pages in German only) published by the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover
• Principles for the handling of research data published by the Thünen Institute