In order to guarantee data sharing, the long-term preservation of these data in sustainable digital repositories is a sine qua non. Data that are created and used by science and scholarship need to be managed, curated and archived, making sure that the substantial investments in preparing and presenting the content and tools will not be lost. Researchers need to be sure that the resources the repositories offer remain meaningful and usable over time. Moreover, the repositories themselves need to have sustainable business models.
Preservation and sustainability raise challenges in many areas. The main issues related to long term preservation and sustainability remain basically unresolved, as many organizational, technical, financial and legal aspects remain open. Certification is therefore fundamental in guaranteeing the trustworthiness of digital repositories and thus in sustaining the opportunities for long-term data sharing.
The Interest Group builds on previous work in the area of certification and delivers a global overview and the necessary recommendations and requirements that allow the effective implementation of certification of digital repositories on national, regional, and global levels.

Curation & Preservation Levels: CoreTrustSeal Position Paper https://zenodo.org/records/11476980

The Certification of Digital Repositories IG is a recognized and endorsed joint RDA/WDA IG with over 200 members and has been in existence since the 3rd Plenary Meeting held in March 2014 in Dublin. One of its primary achievements has been to act as the umbrella of two joint RDA Working Groups:
– Repository Audit and Certification DSA-WDS Partnership WG
– WDS/RDA Assessment of Data Fitness for USe WG

The IG was initially co-chaired by Ingrid Dillo and Michael Diepenbroek. Garry Baker, Rorie Edmunds, Dawei Lin, and Jonathan Petters then took on the role of Chairs at the start of 2019 and hosted breakout sessions at P13, P14, VP16, and VP17 with the major foci thus far being a) to introduce the concept of the TRUST Principles that are expected to become an RDA supporting output, b) how established repository certification processes relate to the TRUST principles, and c) the issues faced by non-domain repositories in becoming acknowledged as trustworthy components of global research data infrastructure.
As of January 2023, the current co-chairs include Dawei LIn, Micky Lindlar and Meredith Goins.
Past sessions included:
RDA P13:
January 21, 2019 at 4:47 pm
Meeting title: Build TRUST to be FAIR – emerging needs of certification in Life Sciences, Geosciences, and Humanities

RDA P14:
June 27, 2019 at 8:10 am
Meeting title: Adding a bit of GLAM to TRUSTworthiness: Certification Beyond Domain Repositories

RDA P15:
November 28, 2019 at 6:32 am
Meeting title: In Data Repositories we TRUST – Review of TRUST Principles, CoreTrustSeal revision, and broader inclusion of repositories in certification

RDA P16:
August 4, 2020 at 7:35 p.m.
Meeting title: Towards building a trustworthy repository ecosystem

RDA P17:
January 27, 2021 at 11:55 am
Meeting title: From principles to metrics to evaluation, increasing TRUST in data repositories

RDA P18:
July 30, 2021 at 5:58 pm
Meeting title: TRUST Principles and challenges on implementation

RDA P19:
February 25, 2022 at 6:58 pm
Meeting title: CoreTrustSeal 2023-25 requirements | TRUST Principles

RDA P20:
October 31, 2022 at 7:45 pm
Meeting title: TRUST Principles & Certification updates

RDA P21:
October 6, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Meeting title: TRUST Principles and Repository Certification Landscape