RDA/WDS Certification of Digital Repositories IG Outputs

Interest Group Other Output December 9, 2025

The TRUST Principles for digital repositories

Output Type: Interest Group Other Output
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0486-7
Standards: TS7 RDA CoreTrustSeal Data Repository Requirements
Regions: Global

Primary Domain: Domain Agnostic
RDA Pathways: FAIR, CARE, TRUST - Evaluation and Policy,FAIR, CARE, TRUST - Adoption, Implementation, and Deployment
Stakeholders: Funders & Policy makers, Infrastructure Providers, Libraries, Regions & Nations, Research Performing Organisations, Researchers & Scientists
Sustainable Development Goals: Partnerships to achieve the Goal
Language: English

Abstract

As information and communication technology has become pervasive in our society, we are increasingly dependent on both digital data and repositories that provide access to and enable the use of such resources. Repositories must earn the trust of the communities they intend to serve and demonstrate that they are reliable and capable of appropriately managing the data they hold.

Following a year-long public discussion and building on existing community consensus, several stakeholders, representing various segments of the digital repository community, have collaboratively developed and endorsed a set of guiding principles to demonstrate digital repository trustworthiness. Transparency, Responsibility, User focus, Sustainability and Technology: the TRUST Principles provide a common framework to facilitate discussion and implementation of best practice in digital preservation by all stakeholders.

The TRUST Principles, however, are not an end in themselves, rather a means to facilitate communication with all stakeholders, providing repositories with guidance to demonstrate transparency, responsibility, user focus, sustainability, and technology.

Impact Statement

The TRUST Principles in their abstract, non-technical formulation facilitate communication and thus impact stakeholders both within and outside the data user community. When data repositories, funders, and data creators adopt FAIR Principles and implement the TRUST Principles, repository users benefit directly through continuing and improved capabilities for efficient and effective use of data. Together, the stakeholders of the TRUST Principles contribute to a cultural change in research towards a data and information ecosystem that has been evolving during the information age but has been an essential part of the scientific process for centuries.

Citations

Lin, D., Crabtree, J., Dillo, I. et al. The TRUST Principles for digital repositories. Sci Data 7, 144 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0486-7

RDA/WDS Certification of Digital Repositories IG

The TRUST Principles for digital repositories

Abstract

Impact Statement

Citations

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