Funding Initiative for the Preservation of Endangered Data Collections and for Data Resilience 2025–2027

The funding initiative of the German Research Foundation aims to sustainably strengthen the resilience of data infrastructures in Germany and Europe. Within the framework of a nationwide grant program (100% funding rate), thematic projects will be supported until the end of 2027 that secure endangered data collections from foreign repositories and make them accessible again. Funded measures include the procurement of additional storage capacities, the provision of personnel resources for indexing, curation, and aggregation, as well as legal reviews. Furthermore, the development of technical solutions and frameworks for integrating secured datasets into supraregional or European structures are among the eligible activities. Applications can be submitted continuously for the funding years 2026 and 2027, with a project duration of up to 36 months and a project start from January 1, 2025.

Eligible for funding are educational institutions, public bodies, and non-profit organizations, in particular scientists at universities and research institutions as well as operators of data infrastructures and libraries. Prerequisites include scientific relevance for securing endangered collections and application submission by scientists at universities or research institutions. Required documents include a project description, a financing and timeline plan, CVs of the project participants, and proof of the objective and scope of the data collections to be secured. Selection is based on the criteria of relevance for research and data resilience, scientific innovation content, feasibility and cost-effectiveness, as well as the sustainability of the preservation solutions. This funding opportunity offers the possibility to ensure the long-term availability of central research data through targeted investments and collaborations and to integrate them into European network structures.