Under the Research Software Infrastructure funding programme, proposals can be submitted for the development, establishment or organisation of infrastructures for research software. Research software infrastructures comprise technically and organisationally networked services and products, e.g. for creating, processing and using as well as accessing and maintaining research software.

In order to ensure a structured development of research software infrastructures, projects can be applied for in different development phases of the infrastructure setup and on one or more of the following three levels:

• Technical tier: comprises infrastructure software and the services and products, solutions, environments or processes to be developed.
• Organisational tier: refers to social aspects with regard to development, expansion and operation of research software infrastructures
• Individual tier: includes skills development when dealing with research software for researchers or research software engineers as well as for members of infrastructure facilities