Initiating Cultural Change in the German Earth System Sciences Community with a Commitment Statement

Abstract

Academia faces enormous challenges to realign publication and evaluation practices towards a sustainable, open, transparent, diverse, equitable, and inclusive way of conducting research. However, values, attitudes, behaviours, and habits are difficult to change. Furthermore, individuals and organisations do not act isolated but in different contexts - from local to international, from labs to academic societies, from early career researchers to university leadership. This makes cultural change very demanding. The Earth System Sciences (ESS) consortium of the German Research Data Infrastructure programme (NFDI4Earth, https://nfdi4earth.de/) takes deliberate steps towards introducing such cultural change in the form of the NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment (https://nfdi4earth.de/2coordinate/cultural-change). Intentionally going beyond FAIR data, the commitment is set up as a means to introduce a cultural change towards openness and to initiate a discourse on the full circle of related values and practices as well as connected social, cultural, and economic topics.  The NFDI4Earth Commitment can be endorsed by the institutions and organisations involved and related to NFDI4Earth, such as research institutions, publishers, or funders, as well as signed by individual researchers. The commitment is designed as a continuous activity and is iterative in its nature: signatories are invited annually to sign the latest version, which over time becomes more extensive or focused, based on the community discussions and the general developments, e.g., in academia as a whole.  The NFDI4Earth Commitment will create a sense of identity for all actors and becomes an instrument to demonstrate values. It provides commonly accepted and manifested documentation that the signatories strive to adhere to, e.g., best practices in ESS research data management and can be held accountable by members or partners. In its current incarnation, the NFDI4Earth commitment puts a particular focus on the need for individuals and organisations to question and reflect their own personal, institutional and their fellows behaviours and attitudes, on the broadness of scientific contributions, scientific evaluation and incentives. Furthermore, it stresses the value of sharing and collaborating and presents a positive picture of change. To emphasize the iterative nature, the NFDI4Earth commitment includes a first level or stage of commitment, with more levels to be expected in future incarnations.  In this work, we present the current version of the NFDI4Earth Commitment, the process for its creation, the steps taken and planned for community engagement, and considerations for the future development, in particular the transferability to international communities or other disciplines within the context of the NFDI. Where already clear, we present lessons learned on the creation and introduction of the commitment.