Strategies for sustainable infrastructures

Develop strategies, including road-maps, funding plans, and business models, to ensure sustainable  infrastructures for research data and other research-relevant digital objects from public funding, including data and software repositories and services, in order to:

a.prioritise, in consultation with stakeholders at the national and international level, research data and other research-relevant digital objects from public funding for short-, medium-, or long-term preservation; 

b.support efforts to improve interoperability among global research infrastructures to leverage national investments and innovation, and to encourage interdisciplinarity;

c.safeguard research data and other research-relevant digital objects determined to be of high-value in the long term, including through provision for maintenance and support in order to ensure long-term sustainability and avoid unavailability and obsolescence over time, including in cases the specific infrastructure ceases to exist; and

d.ensure an appropriate match between funding instruments, review criteria regarding the need for long term preservation of datasets and other research-relevant digital objects, and the expected longevity of needed infrastructure.

In implementing this provision policymakers should consider the following actions:

• Develop publicly funded, open-license software-based infrastructures to ensure transparency, accessibility, and long-term control . 

• Invest in infrastructure and human resources to maintain high quality and value for research while avoiding duplication through harmonisation of national and international efforts.

• Establish a multi-stakeholder advisory body to determine preservation priorities. 

• Implement tiered data preservation frameworks based on scientific relevance, reusability, and societal impact. Encourage community-led curation to identify critical datasets.

• Introduce dedicated long-term infrastructure funding programs separate from traditional research grants.

• Invest in cross-institutional funding models for repository maintenance.

• Build a federated network of institutional data storages to facilitate interoperability and ensure sustainability.  

• Support migration plans for repositories to ensure compatibility with emerging standards.

• Support mature thematic initiatives and leverage emerging technologies like High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to optimise data storage and access.

• Encourage innovation by fostering new business models and enabling diverse actors to contribute to infrastructure development.

Implementing this policy provision emtails several challenges, particularly in prioritisation, funding, interoperability, long-term preservation, and aligning funding mechanisms with infrastructure needs:

• Determining which datasets and digital objects should be preserved for different timeframes can be challenging. Different disciplines have varying preservation needs (e.g., biomedical data requires short-term accessibility, while climate change data may need centuries-long preservation). Limited resources mean not all datasets can be preserved indefinitely, requiring trade-offs in prioritisation.

• Research data infrastructure requires long-term, continuous investment, yet funding is often project-based and short-term. Many research repositories are project-based, leading to data loss when funding ends.

• Developing business models for cost-sharing across institutions, governments, and private entities is complex. Unclear responsibilities between national and institutional funding can lead to gaps in long-term support.

• Lack of incentives for institutions to align national infrastructures with international initiatives such as European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). 

• The rapid evolution of digital storage formats, software dependencies, and repository platforms risks making archived data unusable over time.

• Institutions closing or merging can lead to orphaned datasets without a clear preservation strategy.