FIZ Karlsruhe

What FIZ Karlsruhe does

FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz-Institut für Informationsinfrastruktur GmbH is a non-profit German information infrastructure institute founded in 1977 and headquartered in Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen near Karlsruhe, with a secondary site in Berlin. It is a member of the Leibniz Association and is jointly funded by the German federal government and federal states under a public mandate to supply science and research with scientific information. The organization operates a portfolio of specialized information services: zbMATH Open (the world's largest mathematical reviewing service with over 4 million bibliographic records and 100,000+ new publications added annually), STN (patent and scientific literature search), FIZ AutoDoc (document delivery across 28,000+ Open Access sources), RADAR (a FAIR-aligned research data repository), and ICSD (inorganic crystal structure database). It also participates as a core partner in multiple National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) consortia and serves as the technical platform for the German Digital Library.

The underlying technology stack combines database management, semantic web technologies, knowledge graphs (including the PMDcore materials science ontology), and machine learning — including natural language processing, deep learning, and few-shot/zero-shot methods for knowledge graph population. A dedicated Information Service Engineering research unit develops these capabilities in-house, distinguishing FIZ Karlsruhe from generic information service providers. Revenue comes from three streams: (1) core public institutional funding from Bund and Länder through Leibniz Association membership, (2) subscription and service revenues from information products (STN, FIZ AutoDoc, RADAR, zbMATH) sold to research institutions and industry, and (3) third-party research project funding from bodies such as DFG, BMBF, and NFDI. The customer base spans German and European research institutions, universities, government agencies (including the Federal Ministry of Finance and State Archives of Baden-Württemberg), and corporate research departments requiring patent and scientific information access.

Name

FIZ Karlsruhe

Legal name

FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz-Institut für Informationsinfrastruktur GmbH

Website

https://fiz-karlsruhe.de

Company type

Private

Founded year

1977

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

FIZ Karlsruhe is a non-profit Leibniz Institute providing scientific information infrastructure including the zbMATH mathematics database, STN patent information network, RADAR research data repository, and knowledge graph services to research institutions, universities, and government bodies.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Scientific Information Services

NAICS

Libraries and Archives (51921), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519), Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (54)

SIC

Services-Commercial Physical & Biological Research (8731)

akta.pro primary industry

Scientific & Laboratory Reference (Chemistry, Biology, Physics; Methods & Protocols) (EDAGAGAG)

akta.pro secondary industry

Government, Public Policy & Regulatory Reference (Public Administration, Regulatory Guidance) (EDAGAGAK)

Keywords

• Scientific information services
• Research data infrastructure
• Patent literature databases
• Mathematical reviewing service
• Semantic knowledge graphs

Headquarters

HQ city

Karlsruhe

HQ country

Germany

HQ region

Europe

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations

Revenue model

1. Public Institutional Funding: Core funding from German federal government (Bund) and state governments (Länder) through membership in the Leibniz Association, representing the primary revenue source for this non-profit GmbH
2. Information Services and Products: Revenue from operating information services such as zbMATH, patent information databases (STN), and document delivery services (FIZ AutoDoc) for research institutions and industry
3. Research Project Funding: Third-party funding from organizations such as DFG (German Research Foundation), BMBF, and NFDI consortia for specific research and development projects

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

FIZ Karlsruhe operates a portfolio of curated scientific databases, research data repositories, and patent information services used by research institutions, universities, and industry. Its core products include zbMATH Open (the world's largest mathematical reviewing service with 4+ million bibliographic entries), STN (patent and scientific literature network), FIZ AutoDoc (document delivery), RADAR (research data repository), and ICSD (Inorganic Crystal Structure Database), delivered alongside proprietary knowledge graph and semantic technologies.

Product overview

FIZ Karlsruhe is a Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure that operates a comprehensive portfolio of information products and services. The core offerings include zbMATH Open (mathematical literature database), STN (patent and scientific information network), FIZ AutoDoc (document delivery), RADAR (research data repository), and ICSD (crystal structure database). These products serve scientific research, innovation, and patenting processes. The institute also develops e-Research solutions and participates in multiple NFDI consortia (NFDI4Chem, NFDI4Culture, NFDI4Memory) for national research data infrastructure. The Information Service Engineering unit provides underlying AI/ML technologies including knowledge graphs, semantic search, and natural language processing.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• zbMATH Open: The world's largest reviewing service for pure and applied mathematics, containing more than 4 million bibliographic entries, reviews and abstracts.
• STN
• FIZ AutoDoc
• RADAR
• ICSD
• FIZ PatMon

Products and services

• zbMATH Open World's largest reviewing service for pure and applied mathematics, containing over 4 million bibliographic entries, reviews, and abstracts covering nearly three centuries of mathematical publications. Used by mathematicians and researchers at academic institutions worldwide.
• STN (Scientific and Technical Information Network) Comprehensive information service for patent and scientific literature research, including chemical structures, sequences, and material properties. Used by corporate R&D and IP professionals for patent search and technology intelligence.
• FIZ AutoDoc Document delivery service enabling access to scientific literature, with Open Access checking capability for over 28,000 Open Access sources. Used by researchers and information professionals to obtain full-text articles.
• RADAR Research Data Repository Flexible research data repository service for archiving, publishing, and managing research data across disciplines with FAIR principles support. Used by research institutions and consortia for long-term data preservation.
• ICSD (Inorganic Crystal Structure Database) Database of inorganic crystal structures for crystallography research, providing curated structural data for materials scientists and chemists.
• Archivportal-D Archive portal providing information on archives throughout Germany with online access to index information and archival records. Part of the German Digital Library initiative containing over 45 million cultural objects.

Quantifiable outcome

• zbMATH serves as the world's largest mathematical reviewing service with 4+ million records and 100,000+ new publications annually
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers5 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability6 records

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Nine partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 3 April 2023Joint ScienceCampus 'Digital Transformation in Research' (DiTraRe) investigating the effects of digitalization on scientific work. Leibniz-Senat approved funding of approximately 1.2 million EUR for this collaboration focusing on responsible digital transformation of research methods and workflows.
• NFDI (Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur) ConsortiacoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 10 November 2022Successful participation in NFDI consortia including NFDI4Chem, NFDI4Culture, NFDI4Memory, and NFDI4Objects for developing national research data infrastructure across multiple scientific disciplines.
• DFG (German Research Foundation) - Patents4Science ProjectcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 28 June 2022Four Leibniz Institutes collaborating to build information infrastructure for using patent knowledge in science, developing the first patent-centric knowledge graph for scientific research applications.
• Prof. Dr. Harald Sack (Hasso-Plattner-Institut)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 16 November 2016Appointment of Prof. Dr. Harald Sack to establish the new 'Information Service Engineering' research unit at FIZ Karlsruhe, focusing on semantic analysis, knowledge graphs, and exploratory search methods for scientific information services.
• State Archives of Baden-Württemberg (LABW)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerDevelopment of ArQ - a modern Archival Information System (AFIS) for professional archive tasks, setting new standards for scientific archiving and research infrastructure.
• European Mathematical Society, Heidelberg Academy of SciencescoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerJoint editors of zbMATH Open alongside FIZ Karlsruhe, with Springer Verlag as distribution partner for this internationally recognized mathematical information service.
• Springer VerlagminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorPublisher distributing zbMATH database and content to international academic markets.
• Bundesfinanzministerium (Federal Ministry of Finance)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerLong-term cooperation for digital accessibility of NS-Unrecht compensation documents, making historical records on reparation efforts publicly available.
• German Digital Library (DDB)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerTechnical platform provider for German Digital Library initiatives including newspaper portal, archival portal, and colonial context collections with over 45 million cultural objects.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• TIB – Leibniz-Informationszentrum Technik und Naturwissenschaften Universitätsbibliothek: TIB is the Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library in Hannover — the closest direct peer to FIZ Karlsruhe as a fellow Leibniz-affiliated scientific information infrastructure institution with comparable mandate, scale, and public funding model.
• ZBW – Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft: ZBW is the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and a fellow Leibniz-associated information infrastructure institute. Highly comparable to FIZ Karlsruhe in governance model (publicly funded), product portfolio (librarian-curated databases, research data services), and customer base (research institutions and universities).
• GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften: GESIS is a Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and a parallel non-academic research data infrastructure provider, offering a directly comparable institutional model (Leibniz member, public funding, research data services, NFDI consortium participation) to FIZ Karlsruhe.
• CrossRef: CrossRef operates the dominant scholarly metadata infrastructure (DOIs, citation linking) used by publishers worldwide. Comparable to FIZ Karlsruhe in providing foundational bibliographic metadata infrastructure for research, though distributed rather than curated.
• DataCite: DataCite provides DOIs and metadata infrastructure for research data, directly comparable to FIZ's RADAR research data repository service. Both serve the FAIR data mission and compete for the same institutional research data management customers.

Emerging players

• OpenAlex: OpenAlex is an open scholarly metadata catalog providing free bibliographic and citation data that increasingly competes with paid bibliographic services. Comparable to FIZ's STN and zbMATH on the bibliographic metadata dimension but with an open-data model.
• Europe PMC: Europe PMC is a Europe-wide life sciences bibliographic database, comparable to FIZ's zbMATH in operating as a publicly funded, domain-specific bibliographic service — though focused on life sciences rather than mathematics.

Broad incumbents

• CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service): CAS is the global leader in chemical and patent information and a co-operator of STN with FIZ Karlsruhe. Directly comparable on chemical/patent information services (where FIZ also operates), though CAS operates at significantly larger global scale and with a commercial orientation.
• Clarivate (Web of Science): Clarivate operates Web of Science, the largest commercial citation indexing service. Comparable to FIZ on scholarly information services but operating commercially at much larger scale with broader domain coverage than FIZ's curated mathematics/chemistry/crystallography focus.
• Elsevier (Scopus): Elsevier's Scopus is a leading commercial bibliographic and citation database. Comparable to FIZ's zbMATH/STN in providing scholarly information infrastructure but operating at global scale with commercial orientation and broader domain coverage.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UCYblnBDC6MmVRHnCT_GVoFw
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/fiz-karlsruhe
• Xx.com/FIZKarlsruhe

Compliance3 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles8 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about FIZ Karlsruhe