DFG annual survey launched with TRR 379's metadata system

On September 3, 2025, the TRR 379 successfully rolled out the DFG’s (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) annual survey on coordinated programmes using the TRR 379’s integrated metadata system, reflecting the consortium’s commitment to data-driven research management.

Traditionally, collecting annual survey data has meant engaging every year in a time-consuming, manual process involving paper-and-pen (or mouse-and-keyboard) PDF questionnaires submitted via (e)mail. Instead, through the efforts of the Q02 project, the TRR 379 has now integrated the DFG survey process into its central metadata infrastructure. The metadata system is designed to capture and pool across consortium sites information about people, projects, and project outputs; now, it also harvests data needed to generate the DFG’s PDF form for the personnel census.

Benefits for consortium members, management, and funders #

By embedding the survey in its metadata system, the TRR 379 has created a reliable, secure, efficient, and sustainable process to benefit all stakeholders. For all consortium members, the new survey solution simplifies questionnaires and reduces the duplication of efforts across initiatives and survey submissions in subsequent years. Provision of personalized access tokens to survey participants and hosting of the submitted data on a TRR 379-dedicated virtual server at Forschungszentrum Jülich via an encrypted connection ensure personal data remain confidential. Automating and quickening the processes for distributing questionnaires and consolidating data drastically reduce the administrative overhead required by management teams, while improving quality control of the data. Further, the TRR 379 can draw survey data from the metadata system to serve other purposes, such as updating website pages and dataset records or generating future funder reports. With the metadata system serving as a single source of truth, it is possible to ensure consistency of data across websites, reports, and internal management tools. Even the DFG can expect benefits through cleaner, more consistent, and better documented survey data, extending the value of the data for programme monitoring and longitudinal or comparative analyses.

Foundations of the system #

At the heart of the system are three interoperable components working together to streamline the survey:

• The submission tool - a user-friendly web-based interface for survey participants to enter, lookup, and validate data, powered by the shacl-vue software
• The API - a dump-things backend that allows for secure submission to a server
• The schema - a shared language to standardize and structure data consistently

The schema is the data model that defines what the DFG survey is and how information is structured. Unlike other generic metadata applications, the TRR 379 survey is built around this model: it encodes an individual’s career stages, roles, classified research disciplines, funding associated with participation in the consortium, etc., and it links between people and projects. Because the schema is openly documented and machine-readable, everything else can be built upon it—the submission tool, the backend API, and future integrations.

For more technical information on the survey tool, please visit https://dfg-cp-survey.trr379.de/.

The general approach behind the development of these components is guided by three key principles: FAIRness, flexibility, and interoperability. Each of the components are developed as free and open-source tools that can be self-hosted, ensuring transparency and seamless integration into individualized, established workflows, especially important in a collaborative research centre context—like the TRR 379— made up of many individual, mutually interested actors. Thorough documentation on the tools and detailed participation instructions enhance the accessibility of the survey tool. Active and open development of each of the components introduces flexibility and sustainability into the process, as developments can adapt quickly to evolving infrastructures, processes, and funder requirements. Finally, each of the tools are built to be part of an interoperable ecosystem not only between each other, but also to ensure seamless integration with other metadata sources and external databases within the consortium and beyond.

A model for future practice #

The integration of survey data into a living metadata system represents a pilot case for how collaborative research centres can streamline their obligations while enhancing research visibility. It shows that required administrative tasks associated with research projects need not be a burden, but that they can be part of the same infrastructure that already powers scientific study management. We hope this digital, metadata-driven solution to survey data collection can serve as a blueprint for other coordinated programmes that face similar reporting requirements and ultimately be embedded in funder-driven processes to enhance the robustness and reusability of data at the (inter)national level.