Time to announce it: Join the FactGrid-Trägerverein!
If you’ve never heard of a “Trägerverein” before, it’s practically a Stakeholder Association. In our case, it’s an “eingetragener Verein (e.V.)” under German law.
Do you need to become a member to edit on FactGrid as you have been doing over the past years?
No, by no means. We all want FactGrid to remain free and open. All you need is an account (which we provide to you for free) and a project focused on historical data. The association is a new entity, created to ensure that the platform remains free and open in the years to come. We’re not acting in response to an imminent threat—our situation is comfortable and attractive. However, we must ensure there are people on board who can act on behalf of the entire platform whenever needed. Such a team should form under the legal framework of the Association.
The platform itself is and will remain self-governed—this is what all the projects are keen to preserve. We created FactGrid for research projects with an interest to organize their work collectively—with a open eye on the common data structure they are now producing together. However, sooner or later, the project will need spokespeople we can all authorize to sign agreements with partners, ranging from web hosting institutions to international joint ventures in the developing world of national and, we hope, increasingly international research infrastructures. We promote international integration, and for this, we will need people who can represent the project.
So, who should join?
Anyone with data on FactGrid who wants to be more involved in the teamwork developing behind the scenes—whether you’re a student, a professor, or the institution behind a research project. Our annual fees are designed to be very moderate:
- Students € 10
- Regular members € 25
- Institutional members € 100
The association is not intended to finance the platform through membership fees. We aim to work together to secure institutional support for the platform. FactGrid is secured for the next few years thanks to the involvement of Germany’s National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) within the NFDI4Memory context. However, we need to remain flexible, even in this comfortable situation. We will continue to stay attractive on the international stage only if we can convince National Research Infrastructures in the plural to use us as an international environment. This will be our agenda in the coming years, even if that should become more challenging in an increasingly nationalistic climate.
Work on the platform has been extremely transparent, thanks to the software we use. Our behind-the-scenes work should be just as transparent, and this is what the Stakeholder Association (the Trägerverein) is designed to ensure. We have statutes (with application forms) for this purpose, in German and English:
- FactGrid Trägerverein e.V. — Satzung und Mitgliedschaftsantrag
- FactGrid Stakeholder Association — statute and membership application form
So, join our association to keep the platform on course (and bear with us as we might not yet be accustomed to running a proper German Verein—we are all primarily scholars who are passionate about research projects; this is quite a new challenge for those of us who have started this enterprise).
