Private investments and public interests

Encourage private investment in research data infrastructures with investment in the skills needed to manage and use them, while taking measures to facilitate their openness, reliability and integrity, and to protect the public interest over the long term by avoiding vendor lock in and ensuring data portability.

To successfully encourage private investment in research data infrastructures while ensuring openness, reliability, integrity, and long-term public benefit, policymakers should implement a structured approach that includes strategic partnerships, regulatory safeguards, financial incentives, and technical standards.

Below are key actions to achieve this balance:

• Establish Public-Private Research Data Collaboratives where academic institutions, research organisations, and private sector stakeholders co-develop and fund research data infrastructures. 
  • For example, develop co-financing models where private sector contributions are matched with public funding to ensure open access and ethical data use condins. 

• Create framework agreements that set conditions for private investment without restricting public access. For example, require private-sector-funded repositories to offer a percentage of their infrastructure for open-access research data storage.

• Create tax incentives or subsidies for companies investing in open research data infrastructures that comply with public interest protections.

• Ensure that Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) prioritise interdisciplinary, high-impact research areas (e.g., health data, AI, climate modeling).

• Introduce Open Data Investment Grants that reward companies committing to data-sharing agreements with academic institutions.

• Prevent over-reliance on a single vendor by mandating open-source software use where possible and ensuring interoperability with public infrastructures.

• Promote Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives where companies invest in training programs for data stewardship and management skills.

Attracting private investment in research data infrastructures faces significant hurdles:

• Private investors require clear business cases and sustainable financing models to ensure long-term financial viability. However, many critical infrastructures operate on short funding cycles (3–5 years) due to the nature of funding, creating uncertainty and limiting opportunities for sustained private commitment. 

• Tensions between commercial interests in proprietary data management and academic priorities for open data sharing impede collaboration, reducing the potential for co-investment.

• The lack of data portability and risks of vendor lock-in further deter private sector engagement, as these issues raise concerns about long-term reliability and openness. 

• The limited exchange of data between academic research and industry hinders synergies that could drive investment.

• There is a shortage of skilled data professionals, raising costs for maintaining data infrastructures while ensuring high standards of data integrity and reliability.