One of the biggest obstacles to the further development and implementation of THz technologies is the lack of a common database. Making research data available is therefore the central task for WP9. The establishment of a research data space is a key element, particularly with regard to further development and participation in further projects at the level of the BMBF (Future Cluster), the DFG (SFB/TRR and also Clusters of Excellence) and the EU. To this end, measurement data must be made comprehensible and available free of charge to researchers outside the network as part of the open science strategy. However, research data is also always an economic factor and important for long-term funding. In this respect, dual strategies must be developed, for example through blockchain technologies or patent portfolios, which on the one hand enable free access for the scientific sector and on the other hand allow industrial exploitation for the network partners. This results in three pillars of a terahertz data space to be implemented:

A technical infrastructure for the structured storage of different types of data that combines an archive function, regulated data exchange and flexible data access via interfaces (APIs) is essential. Although these requirements are basically universal and not limited to one research discipline, there are no ready-made solutions for this yet, but they are the subject of both local developments and a desideratum of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI). At RUB and UDE, the necessary components of an RDM infrastructure are currently being established and made available. The merging of the components into a connected data space and its opening to the community are being implemented within the framework of terahertz.NRW and can build on prototypical preliminary work by the CRC MARIE on the Dataverse and Nextcloud applications.

The development of a suitable data structure and ontology with a corresponding metadata schema is essential for the terahertz data space, which will cover and semantically link material characterizations, algorithms and component design. With regard to the subsequent community-wide use of the THz data space, embedding the metadata in engineering standards is essential and will therefore be developed in cooperation with the NFDI consortium NFDI4Ing. Based on the demonstrators described above, data collections and data structures will be developed which, following the example of RO-Crate [SOI/2022], precisely define and store research objects for THz research.

Particularly in the area of component and chip design, patent and usage law aspects set clear guidelines for reuse scenarios and access regulation of the data space. A differentiated data policy is therefore just as necessary as new solutions for smart data formats, with which components and their characterizations can be catalogued, but patent-relevant information can remain inaccessible and protected.