Data technology in materials modelling

With this Springer Brief volume, we aim at disseminating information on recent work, including work in progress, towards developing metadata standards and digital platforms in the field of materials modelling. This work targets applications in the engineering sciences as well as industrial research and development in chemical and mechanical process technology. Digitalization in these fields is significantly advanced by public funding, notably through EU’s Horizon 2020 and (prospectively) Horizon Europe programmes, the DFG programme for National Research Data Infrastructures (NFDI) and BMBF programmes including Material Digital, among many others. The viability and uptake of metadata standards and digital platforms depend strongly on an exchange of ideas between development efforts. In our field, community organizations such as the Research Data Alliance, the European Materials Modelling Council and CECAM (Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire) support this exchange through a multitude of events, white papers, and coordinated activities and task groups. It is our hope that all these endeavours will collaborate as closely as possible and jointly be successful at making FAIR data management ubiquitous in materials modelling. This work is intended as an input to this collaboration that is necessary, in our view. It is therefore intentionally published at a stage long before these developments can be regarded as finished, and we would like to encourage its readers to take this as an opportunity to engage in criticism and formulate recommendations for future work.