Funding for investments into data storage systems in Germany to support the German national research data infrastructure (NFDI).

The National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI – Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur) is a joint funding initiative by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG – German Research Foundation) and the Joint Science Conference (GWK). To address the lack of funding provided by the standard NFDI programme to cover the costs of infrastructure investments, the DFG has launched the special call ‘Data Storage Systems for NFDI’ (Datenspeichersysteme zur Stärkung der NFDI).

The call is designed to support the acquisition of large scale equipment for use within the NFDI consortia. The call follows the rules of the DFG’s standard programme for Major Research Instrumentation (Forschungsgroßgeräte nach Art. 91b GG). This means that grants are offered by the DFG to cover 50% of the costs of major research instrumentation at universities. The second 50% needs to be co-financed by the respective federal state or university.

The grants are intended to cover investment costs into digital storage systems of any type and independent of usage type. This may include: data provision, long-term archiving, geo-redundant data mirroring or data processing.

Applications may be submitted by institutions of higher education (Hochschulen) in Germany who are planning to provide, or are currently providing data storage systems to one or several NFDI consortia.

Applications are accepted for proposals with an overall budget of around €20 million.