Building Sustainable Infrastructures: Lessons Learnt & Future Directions – Takeaways from a panel discussion

This paper summarises the main themes raised and the discussions during a high-profile panel at the bi-yearly German CoRDI (Conference on Research Data Infrastructure) on 28 August 2025, as part of Base4NFDI’s annual User Conference.  The session presented insights on how research data infrastructures can become robust and sustainable and discussed not just technical, but also organizational and human dimensions. Other issues of interest were: relevance of stakeholder and community work, non-anathema of open science and operational models.

Moderated by Sonja Schimmler and Raphael Ritz, the panel comprised four international experts: 

• Carole Goble, University of Manchester, UK / ELIXIR UK

• Hilary Hanahoe, Research Data Alliance (RDA)

• Rosie Hicks, Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC)

• Mark van de Sanden, Géant