The DFG’s (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, German Research Foundation) statement on the resilience of research data infrastructures sends an important and timely message: when it comes to research data, openness alone is no longer enough. If data is to remain accessible, usable, and meaningful over time, it also requires resilient infrastructures.

For many years, discussions around research data infrastructures have rightly focused on openness, accessibility, and the FAIR principles more generally. These remain essential. But openness alone does not guarantee that data can actually be preserved, interpreted, reused, and linked. Data may be formally available but still depend on short-term project funding, isolated local solutions, unstable hosting arrangements, or undocumented workflows.

This is particularly relevant for Democracy Research. Democracy Research relies on highly diverse forms of data, including surveys, media content, political texts, administrative records, electoral data, and contextual indicators. These resources are even more valuable as they are international and comparable. However, as they are often produced in different national settings, under different legal and institutional conditions, they are more at risk of becoming inaccessible, underused, or effectively lost for future research.

Data are a core resource for the field of democracy research seeking to understand democratic transformation over time and across contexts. Without resilient infrastructures, Democracy Research becomes more fragmented and more dependent on temporary project logics than it should be. This limits the field’s ability to generate comparable, reusable, and policy-relevant knowledge.

Seen from this perspective, the DFG statement is important because it identifies current vulnerabilities and helps reframe the debate. Research infrastructures should not be understood merely as back-end technical services. They are part of the very conditions that make cumulative knowledge production possible. 

MEDem therefore strongly welcomes the DFG’s call to take data resilience seriously. If research data is to remain a durable public good, it must be supported by infrastructures that are not only open but also robust, sustainable, and designed for long-term use. For Democracy Research in particular, this is central to the field’s future capacity — the core aim of MEDem.