DFG Senate ad hoc working group outlines current risks and puts forward recommendations for joint action on the part of researchers, scholarly societies and research policymakers

Research data now provides the underlying foundation for almost all academic disciplines. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) believes that free access to reliable research data is a key prerequisite for freedom of research, from basic research through to practical application. With advancing digitalisation, the use of international cloud services and the automation of analysis processes, however, there is also increasing dependence on the digital infrastructures that store and process this data and make it available. This means that research data is no longer merely a by-product of scientific work but a key resource that is of strategic importance to research, innovation and knowledge sovereignty.  

At the same time, its vulnerability is increasing: cyberattacks, institutional crises, ideologically motivated funding decisions and geopolitical tensions can lead to the manipulation of data, massive data loss and the loss of access to data. Examples include globally used structures such as GenBank (a gene sequence database) hosted at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the PubMed publication database also hosted at the NIH, and data resources held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as satellite programmes of major relevance to climate and environmental research.  

Restrictions of this kind can currently be observed worldwide, along with other limitations on academic freedom. 

Many research-relevant data repositories are exposed to significant vulnerabilities when maintained without adequate redundancy. Risks arise, for instance, where access to repositories hosted abroad may be subject to severe restrictions, where legal frameworks governing the reuse of data remain insufficiently clarified, or where sustainable preservation strategies are lacking. Additional risks emerge from structural dependencies, including potential lock-in effects, particularly in relation to commercial service providers. Alongside open access, therefore, issues of resilience, sovereignty and sustainable preservation are moving to the forefront, with current initiatives and policy debates gaining significant momentum. The current coalition agreement explicitly includes a commitment to safeguarding endangered data repositories. In addition, the preservation of research data has been addressed in several formal parliamentary inquiries in the German Bundestag, which, among other things, call for the development of strategies to mitigate structural dependencies. Extensive discussions within the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany in 2025 paved the way for a new funding initiative. Financed by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and administered by the DFG, this initiative aims to safeguard endangered data repositories, establish robust technical and organisational redundancies, and ensure their integration in national and European infrastructures. This parallel approach – parliamentary focus and funding policy impetus – demonstrates that redundancy, accessibility and governance of research data infrastructures are now widely recognised as strategic challenges for both the research system and science policy. 

Existing initiatives such as the consortia of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) provide important points of reference for the ongoing development of a resilient data infrastructure. However, it remains unclear how collaborative structures, redundancy mechanisms and legal responsibilities can be sustainably embedded, financed and effectively coordinated within the European legal framework. 

The aim is to create a resilient, sovereign and interoperable research data landscape that not only ensures technically robust data preservation of international relevance, but also enables both openness and security. 

These aspects have been addressed by the Senate working group on “Resilience in Academia”, established in spring 2025 for an initial period of two years. Conceived as an interdisciplinary forum for dialogue, this working group, comprising members of the DFG Senate and the Executive Committee, positions itself as a central point of contact for scholarly societies and academic stakeholders. It is currently monitoring ongoing debates, emerging forms of cross-sector collaboration and future-oriented approaches in the field. With the aim of strengthening “infrastructural resilience”, the working group calls upon researchers, scholarly societies and research policymakers to adopt the following recommendations:

1. Researchers and scholarly societies should act jointly.

• Researchers should handle their research data responsibly by applying discipline-specific standards for data description and by making use of supra-regional infrastructures for quality-assured archiving and curation. In doing so, they contribute to ensuring the compatibility of data repositories.
• Through the informed use of open-source products of European origin, researchers can help reduce dependencies on commercial products and thus strengthen digital sovereignty.
• Scholarly societies and disciplinary associations should form alliances and engage in close dialogue – also with their European counterparts – so as to be able to articulate positions on dependencies and risks affecting data repositories and infrastructures relevant to their respective disciplines. 
• Scholarly societies and disciplinary associations should also closely coordinate with relevant infrastructure facilities in order to potentially develop concrete measures aimed at building a resilient data infrastructure.  

2. Research institutions and research policymakers should secure infrastructures on a long-term basis.  

• Funding for research data infrastructure should, in key areas, be regarded as an essential public service and therefore a core national responsibility, rather than being left solely to private or market-based actors.
• As such, there is a need for sustainable funding for resilient, long-term European and international data infrastructures.
• A first step towards resilient data infrastructures should be the consolidation of measures already initiated (e.g. the Funding Initiative to Secure Endangered Data Repositories and Promote Data Resilience).
• Funding for a resilient data infrastructure should not be concentrated in a single funding organisation or in a single European country. Sustainable models must be developed for cooperative funding, particularly on a cross-border basis at European and international level. With this in mind, not only the BMFTR but also other ministries and, where possible, additional actors such as private foundations should contribute to funding a resilient data infrastructure.
• Data infrastructures can fulfil their function for academia and society only if personnel with specialised expertise in software engineering, data curation and IT administration are available on a long-term basis. 
• For this reason, it is important to promote the development of dedicated career paths in the infrastructure domain, not least in order to counter the risk of highly qualified personnel leaving academia for industry.