FAIR Data Management of Digital Research Objects in a Public Data Centre for Astroparticle Physics: KASCADE Cosmic-Ray Data Centre

The KASCADE Cosmic-Ray Data Centre (KCDC) is a public data centre for high-energy astroparticle physics, built on the legacy data of the KASCADE experiment. For over a decade, KCDC has supported major research data practices, such as open data, open source, and open education. It provides users with a public REST (REpresentational State Transfer) API for data retrieval, information on data quality assessment, and data transformation, along with platform versioning, data provenance tracking, clear materials licensing, and online data analysis capabilities. KCDC’s integration with interdisciplinary data management initiatives such as PUNCH4NFDI (Particles, Universe, NuClei and Hadrons for NFDI) and NAPMIX (Nuclear, Astro, and Particle Metadata Integration for eXperiments) facilitates technology exchange with broader scientific communities. It also enables the implementation of advanced data management tools that enhance interoperability, findability, accessibility, and reusability (FAIR principles) — not only for experimental datasets but also for a wider range of digital research objects hosted on the platform. This contribution focuses on metadata modeling and mapping for experimental datasets and simulations, as well as the FAIR publishing of digital resources in astroparticle physics. Additionally, it presents metadata curation strategy adopted for integration within interdisciplinary data ecosystems. These efforts aim to serve as a blueprint in order to reduce technical barriers on the way of interdisciplinary and multimessenger research.