The NFDI4Objects consortium aims to provide sustainable, interoperable, and FAIR access to research data on material and digital objects from the disciplines of archaeology, monument preservation, conservation sciences, art history, museums, collections, and government agencies. Against the backdrop of a highly heterogeneous data landscape, the consortium's research data management strategy focuses in particular on the (further) development of metadata standards, ontologies, terminologies, FAIRification services, and a knowledge graph-based infrastructure that supports the entire data lifecycle (Bibby et al. 2023).

The concept of object biography forms a central basis on which the consortium is structurally oriented. While the data life cycle (data creation, data processing, data analysis, data publication, data archiving) is a common principle in research data management, the object biography lays the foundation for a new understanding of the creation and representation of collection data. It links historical, archaeological, scientific, and museum perspectives and provides a structure in which the object is understood as a dynamic hub of events, actors, places, and meanings (Gerber, Görz, Wagner 2025).

A central focus is on harmonizing existing international standards such as CIDOC CRM and LIDO, which are being further developed as application profiles and domain-specific extensions. In areas where established standards are insufficient or do not even exist, supplementary ontologies, domain-specific minimal data sets, and controlled vocabularies, are being created to map different data models. Community clusters, temporary working groups, and use-case-driven development processes are used to connect the community in order to jointly develop the foundations for interoperable data exchange (NFDI4Objects 2025).

The N4O Objects Core Metadata Profile (OCMDP), which is currently under development, is one result of this work. It enables connection to the National Research Data Infrastructure's cross-domain metadata profiles, making the consortium's data available in other subject areas as well, and serves as the basis for RDF-based exchange formats and knowledge graph integrations. The Material Heritage Crosswalk Ontology (MaCHeCO) is developed to map domain ontologies to CIDOC CRM to make the data compliant for the consortium’s knowledge graph (Thiery, Gerber, Fricke 2025).

The consortium views the implementation of the FAIR principles as an ongoing process that encompasses technical, organizational, and legal dimensions. NFDI4Objects responds to different requirements for openness, data protection, and access restrictions, for example in the context of monument data or sensitive collection information, according to the guiding principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” (Baars, Schäfer, Gerber 2025). In addition to FAIR, CARE principles are taken into account, especially when dealing with sensitive data and cultural heritage.

The technical backbone of the consortium is the NFDI4Objects Knowledge Graph, which acts as a central access point for distributed metadata and enables the semantic linking of heterogeneous data sources (Voß, Heers 2025). Existing and newly developed services are connected via standardized interfaces and workflows, with a federated, decentralized architecture promoting digital sovereignty, resilience, and sustainability. Organizationally, the service portfolio is continuously developed through monitoring, community feedback, and evaluation, and is gradually integrated into the institutional service portfolios of the partners (NFDI4Objects 2025).