DFG Data Repositories and Data Resilience Programme

Funding programme to strengthen data infrastructure resilience and secure at-risk datasets and research results from foreign repositories that are critical to German research.

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG – German Research Foundation) is a self-governing organisation for the promotion of science and research in Germany and serves all branches of science and the humanities. It is almost entirely financed by the Federal Government and by the Federal states.

The Data Repositories and Data Resilience Programme (Förderinitiative zum Sichern gefährdeter Datenbestände und zur Datenresilienz 2025 bis 2027) aims to preserve datasets and research results stored in repositories abroad that are of particular importance to German research. Funding is provided for a wide range of measures that help protect scientific data and research results. This may include the acquisition of storage capacity, the provision of personnel resources for the indexing, curation or disciplinary aggregation of data, legal assessment processes, and the integration of secured data sets into cross-regional or European structures. Funding may also be provided for the development of frameworks and technologies that enable the inclusion of relevant repositories or infrastructures in cross-regional or European networks or cloud environments. The programme supports these activities via the following measures:

• Reimbursement of expenditure already incurred: Research institutions and individual researchers who have recently used DFG funding or institutional resources to preserve endangered data holdings may apply for reimbursement of the expenses incurred. Eligible costs may include short-term expenses for materials or personnel involved in the preservation or curation of data, as well as investments in equipment such as storage media used for the temporary safeguarding of data. Reimbursement is available for expenses incurred from 1 August 2025, and only for costs arising within the 2025 calendar year.
• Future Expenditure: Funding is provided to support the timely safeguarding of collections, datasets, and research outputs, as well as their aggregation from a disciplinary perspective and renewed accessibility for research purposes. Support may also be requested to cover future costs related to personnel, materials, and equipment necessary for data preservation efforts.
• Integration into the European Research Area: Funding is provided for projects that strengthen the resilience of data infrastructures. A key aspect of resilience is redundant data storage, ideally coordinated at the European level. Therefore, funding may be granted for initiatives that enhance the accessibility of data preserved in Germany through thematically connected European data infrastructures, as well as for projects focused on developing distributed and networked storage or data infrastructure systems.