Distributed User Support Network in NFDI4Earth

The national research data infrastructure NFDI4Earth builds a network of more than 60 partners to support research data management (RDM) in the earth system sciences. One of the early established infrastructures is the user support network (USN). The partner institutions of NFDI4Earth range from universities over research institutes to governmental agencies, all having different approaches to handle research data in their specific discipline, different support infrastructures and workflows and a different way to support users in research data handling. In most cases the local RDM support of an institution is the right place to go for researchers. In cases where local RDM support is missing or for cross-disciplinary projects it might be difficult for the single user to find the right contact person or support. A distributed support network can help in these cases involving several support persons dealing with one user service request. Our ambition is to provide a high-quality data management support network for ESS researchers. In this network, already existing support institutions contribute jointly. We collaborate with different RDM support initiatives such as state initiatives but also national consortium helpdesks of related disciplines to share experiences and offer an even wider support portfolio. We present our support network, addressing the needed competences of the data experts, show the workflows and address the challenges we are facing.