DiSSCo RI: the Cost Book for DiSSCo

The European Research Infrastructure DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections) aims to digitally unify all European natural science assets, to ensure that collection data are easily findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). 170 institutions across more than 23 countries are involved in this ambitious objective of transforming a fragmented landscape of collections into an integrated knowledge base, enabling researchers to use and interconnect different collections.

Research Infrastructure (hereinafter referred as to RI) cost calculation can be multifaceted and complex. DiSSCo is both a central team and a coordinated network responsible for supplying the infrastructure's services. The RI linked costs are spread all over Europe and connect thousands of people. As the extended DiSSCo perimeter encompasses a wide range of services - from physical access, to digitisation on demand and consulting services - distributed amongst a great number of partners, cost information is spread across centralised and decentralised areas.

The following article outlines the first "centralised" cost calculation exercise for DiSSCo and concludes that the DiSSCo Central Hub office would need a minimum annual budget of 1.4 million euros to be operational. This would not change between the construction and the operation phases. Furthermore, the DiSSCo Central Hub IT team would need a budget of 2.2 million euros to finalise all IT systems under the construction phase (if the construction phase lasts two years, it would cost around 1.1 million euros per year) in order to develop the digital services that will facilitate access to NSC data. The annual cost to operate these services would be around 1.2 million euros per year. This budget will evolve according to funding opportunities, the enlargement of the membership and the implementation of a business model open to new sources of income. As is often the case, research infrastructures grow over time and the more DiSSCo becomes known and recognised, the more it will attract users and the more its budget will increase.

In order to calculate the RI linked costs, which are spread all over Europe, we developed a cost calculation methodology that has been distributed amongst all the 170 DiSSCo partner institutions. Twenty-seven institutions responded to the exercise. This allows for a first shared understanding on how to calculate DiSSCo related costs. It also provides the first figures on a cost-per-hour or a cost-per-service basis and it opens the door for the pricing of DiSSCo services. Finally, such a methodology also aims at guaranteeing a fair service pricing, based on the same principles and variables.