Refining the Multi-Dimensional Category System

The Multi-Dimensional Category System developed by Hasselbring et al. 2025 provides a framework for classifying research objects, supporting software corpus analyses, and advancing our understanding of research software types and their properties. This system emerged from an extensive collaborative process involving experts in Software Engineering and Research Software Engineering, achieving stable consensus among participants. However, its comprehensibility and applicability for broader audiences remained unvalidated.Through a mini-project within NFDIxCS, we are refining this category system into a universally comprehensible taxonomy suitable for use as metadata in the Research Data Management Container (RDMC); a framework for archiving research data and software within their contextual environments. Our approach employs an iterative methodology encompassing: (1) precise definition of terminology, (2) development of a hierarchical ontology, and (3) validation through structured surveys, with subsequent iterations informed by empirical results.By refining this category system, two main goals will be achieved: (1) The category system can be used without further explanation, enabling communities to identify which research software types are most prevalent in their research artifacts, and (2) Tools and infrastructure can integrate this system into their metadata creation processes to make artifacts more findable and understandable.As this project is in its early stages, this presentation will focus on the methodological approach and provide detailed insights into the project roadmap rather than presenting final findings.