New Publication: KonsortSWD Strengthens Sustainable Data Reuse Through Targeted RDM Funding

In the working paper “Sustainable Provision of Data Sets and Strengthening of Research Data Management via Grant Funding from KonsortSWD” (KonsortSWD Working Paper 17/2026) https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20431657, Aßmann, Schlücker, and Wolf present new findings on the impact of targeted project funding in research data management (RDM).

KonsortSWD-NFDI4Society is part of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and aims to strengthen the research data infrastructure in the social, behavioral, educational, and economic sciences and to support researchers and research data centers in making data available and enabling its reuse in accordance with the FAIR principles.

The working paper is based on experiences from the KonsortSWD RDM project funding, which supports researchers and research data centers in processing previously inaccessible sensitive data corpora and transferring them into the sustainable infrastructures of research data centers (RDCs) to make them accessible for scientific reuse.

The results show:

• In two funding rounds (2021 and 2023), 12 projects were funded out of 60 applications.
• By spring 2026, 10 new data corpora with a total of 60 datasets had been published.
• In addition, two anonymization concepts were developed for the secure handling of sensitive data.

In this way, the funding makes a direct contribution to improving the discoverability, accessibility, and reusability of existing research data. It becomes particularly clear that targeted RDM funding instruments can unlock previously untapped sensitive data and integrate it sustainably into the infrastructure of research data centers.

In addition to these findings, the paper identifies key success factors for funding programs: clear criteria, early involvement of relevant stakeholders, close collaboration with research data centers, and standardized processes. The appendix provides a variety of documents from the funding process (such as the transfer agreement).

Moreover, the paper provides an overview of the funded datasets and their research potential.