ZBW strengthens trustworthy AI research with high-quality metadata

Kiel/Hamburg, 14 October 2025: The ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics is fundamentally innovating its processes for indexing scientific information. The aim is to automatically generate high-quality metadata using artificial intelligence methods and make it available for research. The ZBW is thus enabling a data basis for new scientific questions, both in modern infrastructural and library contexts and in research projects in computer science and economics. At the same time, it is making an important contribution to making generative AI more transparent and comprehensible. 

Anyone working with artificial intelligence methods in research needs high-quality, well-structured data as a reliable basis. This applies equally to modern infrastructural and library applications as well as to research projects in computer science and economics.

The ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics is therefore specifically expanding its role as a central provider of economic metadata. 

"If we want artificial intelligence to work reliably, we have to start at the grassroots level – with the quality, open access and transparency of the data from which it learns," explains Prof. Dr Klaus Tochtermann, Director of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

With its many years of multidisciplinary expertise in the AI-based creation and processing of metadata, and as the central information infrastructure for economic content in Germany, the ZBW will fundamentally transform its metadata production and maintenance processes with the help of AI methods. This will increase the efficiency, machine readability and reusability of its data.

"With the new metadata infrastructure, we are creating the conditions for making data openly available for AI research. It will also make an important contribution to the data sovereignty of data from Europe," Prof. Dr. Klaus Tochtermann continues.

With the GWK committee's decision to fund the project to the tune of 7.5 million euros for the period 2027 to 2030, the decisive hurdle in a highly competitive and science-led selection process has been cleared. The GWK's formal decision will be made in November as part of the budget process.

The ZBW's Scientific Advisory Board emphasises the great importance of this development, both for the open access transformation and for AI research. It is essential that a science-based institution such as the ZBW contributes to making generative AI more transparent and comprehensible.

The project involves setting up an open, modular technical infrastructure that converts metadata from a wide variety of publication types – from digital publications and research data to programme codes – into uniform, machine-readable formats. These will be made accessible via open interfaces for existing systems, such as the EconBiz research portal, union catalogues, the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Dorit Stenke, Minister for General and Vocational Education, Science, Research and Culture of the State of Schleswig-Holstein, emphasises: “With this project, the ZBW is demonstrating how digitisation and artificial intelligence can be used responsibly in science. Schleswig-Holstein is thus strengthening its position as an innovative research location where scientific excellence and social responsibility go hand in hand.”