Business units

In the Patent & Scientific Information unit, we develop and operate information services to support and promote research, innovation and patenting processes in business and science. Our core activities are the analysis, structuring and indexing of information from scientific publications and patents. To this end, we conduct research into new methods of knowledge mining and networking. We also provide scientific and technical advice for our international Clients.

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In Subject-Specific Services unti, we develop and operate services for the fields of mathematics, crystallography and energy. The most important products are zbMATH Open (with the integrated software database swMATH), ICSD and INIS. In addition, we develop and aggregate relevant sources in the respective subject areas. The services are aimed at scientists and academics in research.

Through strict selection and quality criteria, the networking of information to expand content and the increasing digitization and efficiency enhancement of our work processes, we meet the increased demands on the range of functions, user-friendliness, completeness and quality of our services.

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In the e-Research unit, we develop and operate infrastructure-oriented services in the digital humanities and in research data management. The close integration of consulting, conception, development and operation leads to a continuous transfer of our results into practical application. The German Digital Library (DDB) and the research data repository RADAR are important central research infrastructures and supplemented by other services.

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The rapid development of AI in recent years has made it one of the most important topics in research and society, with numerous new applications and possibilities that affect our lives in all areas from medicine and business to education and entertainment. In AI research, the relationship between symbolic and sub-symbolic knowledge representation is central: symbolic systems such as description logics encode knowledge with abstract symbols and rules, while sub-symbolic systems such as neural networks recognize patterns from data using statistical methods. The Information Service Engineering unit deals with research questions at the intersection of symbolic and subsymbolic knowledge representation.

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Technological and digital change poses various social and legal challenges for information infrastructures and far beyond. What data (protection) law challenges arise from this change? Who is liable in the event of data loss? What does legally compliant IT security look like? Which licenses can be used to achieve a successful transfer of knowledge? What impact do new technologies such as generative AI have on our fundamental rights? in our Intellectual Property Rights unit we deal with these and other questions, particularly those relating to data (protection) law, IT law and copyright law.

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The IT systems and data networks service unit is geared towards the strategic goals of FIZ Karlsruhe and provides the IT infrastructure required for the operation of workstation, server, storage and network systems. We operate the related IT systems and applications in our own data center or as a cloud service. Important aspects of our planning are the high availability of IT resources, ensuring IT security and adherence to IT compliance requirements. This means that IT systems and data networks are essential for achieving FIZ Karlsruhe's strategic goals.

The Administration unit is responsible for finance, controlling, human resources, infrastructure and legal matters at FIZ Karlsruhe. We thus help the company comply with the principles of corporate governance, for example through internal control processes as well as risk and compliance management. We also implement our Future Work concept here.