FactGrid:About

What is FactGrid?

FactGrid is a Wikibase installation that brings the software developed for Wikimedia’s Wikidata project into the world of academic research. It serves as both a technological and cultural game changer. Technologically, it is innovative because we are no longer constrained by the limitations of relational databases. Anything can now become an object of knowledge, or an "item," in any arrangement of properties that we can define as needed.

Culturally, FactGrid is a game changer because the software is designed to be used by large communities of users from diverse linguistic backgrounds, all working on the same objects in their respective languages.

What can I do on FactGrid?

Once you have an account you can create database objects for pracically any object of knowledge can imagine. All these "items" get Q-Number which can then be referred to by any other database.

What statements can you make on these objects? Practically any. FactGrid comes without a finite data model. You know — with a look at your object — what kind of question would need what kind of answer and we can create the “property” that will allow the specific connection, so that you can ask questions of the sort of questions you want to raise on any number of objects.

The main goal of the project is to offer an alternative to the ongoing proliferation of data silos. Everyone on FactGrid is working on the same objects. We are accumulating knowledge where other databases begin from zero time after time.

What are the requirements that projects must fulfill?

FactGrid data are free to download under the CC0 license. Adding new information is, however, restricted to registered users under real name accounts. Principal investigators are provided with administrative accounts which they use to generate accounts for their teams.

All projects are asked to state their research interests on the platform. They are, in return, free to create any objects they are interested in. Unlike the GND or Wikidata, FactGrid has no notability criteria. We invite projects to create items about which they would love to know far more.

What costs should I expect?

FactGrid services are free. The user community has formed a stakeholder association, with the goal of keeping the platform free of charge. Until 2023, Gotha’s Research Centre funded FactGrid with €3,000 per year. Since then, the platform has been supported by Germany’s National Research Data Initiative (NFDI) with a five-year grant of approximately €20,000 per year. These funds primarily support the creation of tools that all projects can use on the database. Several of our projects invest the savings into specific tools for their respective home pages. The database allows external services to access all its information without further barriers.

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