Federal government provides 30 million euros for independent research data

The days when German science could blindly rely on the free provision of medical research data from the USA seem to be definitively over. The federal government is looking with growing concern at the volatile situation across the Atlantic and is now drawing initial financial consequences: The federal government is providing an immediate budget of around 30 million euros to secure endangered research data sets. This is according to the executive's response to an inquiry from the Green Party faction in the Bundestag.

According to the information, the funds will be awarded via the German Research Foundation (DFG) in a science-led process. The first applications are already undergoing the review phase.

The background is the changed focus in US fiscal policy, which could jeopardize the operation of central infrastructures such as the literature database PubMed or the clinical trial register ClinicalTrials.gov. In particular, the fear that the US government under Donald Trump will drastically cut funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is causing unrest. Furthermore, there are concerns that political influence could impair scientific integrity and free access to these global standard resources. PubMed, operated by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) as a division of the NIH, is the world's most important resource for biomedical literature with over 30 million citations.

The fact that these concerns are not unfounded was already shown at the beginning of March 2025, when PubMed was briefly completely unavailable. The platform was accessible again a day later. The lead research ministry also emphasizes that there have been no permanent significant restrictions so far. Nevertheless, the unrestricted availability of these resources is no longer taken for granted in Berlin.

European Science Cloud in Focus

The German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED) has already announced that with the project Open Life Science Publication Database (OLSPub), it aims to create an open, reliable, and sustainable European alternative to PubMed. The goal is to combine technological independence with openness and transparency to protect the innovative power of research. The project is currently being reviewed as part of the DFG funding measures.

In parallel, the federal government is focusing on long-term European data sovereignty. To coordinate this process, it has established a national working group to consolidate exchange with the scientific community and European partners. The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) serves as a central anchor point in this regard. According to the executive, questions regarding the securing of endangered data sets are already being discussed and coordinated with a very high degree of practical application and implementation within the framework of this initiative.

Despite these ambitions, the diplomatic information situation remains thin. There is no official exchange with US authorities about future funding decisions at the government level, it is said. Nor does a systematic monitoring of US budgetary decisions exist so far. Instead, the executive relies on existing networks within research and financial participation in large European projects such as EMBL-EBI, which mirrors PubMed content. The mobilized 30 million euros are thus a first protective wall to shield domestic science from the loss of data access.

(mki)