Cautionary Tales in unTRUSTworthy Data Repositories

Abstract:

A year-long collaborative community effort from Research Data Alliance (RDA) resulted in the development of the TRUST Principles, a set of guiding principles to demonstrate digital repository trustworthiness, centered around Transparency, Responsibility, User focus, Sustainability, and Technology. As a companion to the Principles, which are intended as a framework to facilitate discussion and implementation of best practices in digital preservation, this short presentation (~15 minutes) reviews 2 timely real world case studies of the consequences of using unTRUSTworthy data repositories during the COVID-19 pandemic response which resulted in public misinformation, hampered researchers efforts and lead to poor decision making. These examples illustrate how important the TRUST Principles are for data managers who have a duty to safeguard public trust in science.