Abstract
We explore financing models that support data resources and associated services in a long-term data infrastructure. Data infrastructure components often originate in research projects dealing with digital data and may be discontinued when projects end. Long-term sustainability is challenging and requires a detailed understanding of the elements that need to be in place for successful continuation and operation of a digital infrastructure. In this paper we recognise the different kinds of activities that need to be undertaken in order to run research data infrastructure and individually match the costs of these activities with potentially suitable financing. We show that a single source of financing that is suitable for all activities is really hard to find and suggest an approach to pay for different activities from different sources of money. We find that some of the essential activities of research data infrastructure are systematically difficult to finance. We conclude this paper with recommendations for infrastructure providers/creators, infrastructure users, and national and international research funding organisations. Although the experience leading to this work was gained in life science data infrastructure, it is thought that the concepts presented in this paper can also prove their value for data service infrastructure in other research fields.