CoreTrustSeal: Where Are We Now and Where Are We Heading?

Abstract:

The CoreTrustSeal certification for data repositories was established in 2017 by the World Data System and the Data Seal of Approval under the Research Data Alliance. It works with candidate repositories to meet 16 Requirements that will ensure they are persistent, robust, and trustworthy sources of data and data services, and is an embodiment of the TRUST Principles for Digital Repositories of Transparency, Responsibility, User Focus, Sustainability, and Technology.

Around 100 repositories are CoreTrustSeal certified, and demand is increasing. Such demand is driven from the fact that open, verifiable, and reproducible science calls for research data to remain available, useful, and meaningful into the future. Scientists, funders, librarians, and publishers want to establish which data repositories can be entrusted with managing, curating, and archiving data for the long term, guaranteeing that investment in data collection is preserved.

The importance of CoreTrustSeal has been recognized by the European Commission, with the Requirements nominated for inclusion in its official ICT Technical Specifications, and the certification explicitly named in the final report and action plan of its expert group on FAIR data. CoreTrustSeal is also named in the AGU/COPDESS Enabling FAIR Data Project, and is progressively used by publishers when recommending data repositories to authors.

The year 2019 saw the first community review of CoreTrustSeal. Given the number of repositories continuing to transition to the certification, the Requirements remain fundamentally stable for 2020–2022. The research data landscape is complicated and evolving rapidly, however, and a number of topics were raised during the review that will necessitate inclusion after further exploration. In particular, CoreTrustSeal must align better with the expectations coming from the FAIR Data Principles, and must also embrace a diversity of organizations beyond domain data repositories.

This presentation will give a brief overview of the current status of CoreTrustSeal and introduce the TRUST Principles for Data Repositories that capture the essential elements needed for concise and measurable approaches to trustworthiness. The focus will then shift to look at how CoreTrustSeal might change and expand to best serve the needs of the community.