Building a Trustworthy Data Repository: CoreTrustSeal Certification as a Lens for Service Improvements

Authors : Cara Key, Clara Llebot, Michael Boock

Objective

The university library aims to provide university researchers with a trustworthy institutional repository for sharing data. The library sought CoreTrustSeal certification in order to measure the quality of data services in the institutional repository, and to promote researchers’ confidence when depositing their work.

Methods

The authors served on a small team of library staff who collaborated to compose the certification application. They describe the self-assessment process, as they iterated through cycles of compiling information and responding to reviewer feedback.

Results

The application team gained understanding of data repository best practices, shared knowledge about the institutional repository, and identified areas of service improvements necessary to meet certification requirements. Based on the application and feedback, the team took measures to enhance preservation strategies, governance, and public-facing policies and documentation for the repository.

Conclusions

The university library gained a better understanding of top-notch data services and measurably improved these services by pursuing and obtaining CoreTrustSeal certification.

URL : Building a Trustworthy Data Repository: CoreTrustSeal Certification as a Lens for Service Improvements

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.761

Increasing the Reuse of Data through FAIR-enabling the Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories

Authors : Benjamin Jacob Mathers, Hervé L’Hours

The long-term preservation of digital objects, and the means by which they can be reused, are addressed by both the FAIR Data Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and a number of standards bodies providing Trustworthy Digital Repository (TDR) certification, such as the CoreTrustSeal.

Though many of the requirements listed in the Core Trustworthy Data Repositories Requirements 2020–2022 Extended Guidance address the FAIR Data Principles indirectly, there is currently no formal ‘FAIR Certification’ offered by the CoreTrustSeal or other TDR standards bodies. To address this gap the FAIRsFAIR project developed a number of tools and resources that facilitate the assessment of FAIR-enabling practices at the repository level as well as the FAIRness of datasets within them.

These include the CoreTrustSeal+FAIRenabling Capability Maturity model (CTS+FAIR CapMat), a FAIR-Enabling Trustworthy Digital Repositories-Capability Maturity Self-Assessment template, and F-UJI ,  a web-based tool designed to assess the FAIRness of research data objects.

The success of such tools and resources ultimately depends upon community uptake. This requires a community-wide commitment to develop best practices to increase the reuse of data and to reach consensus on what these practices are.

One possible way of achieving community consensus would be through the creation of a network of FAIR-enabling TDRs, as proposed by FAIRsFAIR.

URL : Increasing the Reuse of Data through FAIR-enabling the Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v17i1.852

Evidence for Trusted Digital Repository Reviews: An Analysis of Perspectives

Author : Jonathan David Crabtree

Building trust in our research infrastructure is important for the future of the academy. Trust in research data repositories is critical as they provide the evidence for past discoveries as well as the input for future discoveries.

Archives and repositories are examining their options for trustworthy review, audit, and certification as a means to build trust within their content creator and user communities. One option these institutions have is to increase and demonstrate their trustworthiness is to apply for the CoreTrustSeal.

Applicants for the CoreTrustSeal are becoming more numerous and diverse, ranging general purpose repositories, preservation infrastructure providers, and domain repositories. This demand for certification and the subjective nature of decisions around levels of CORETrustSeal compliance drives this dissertation.

It is a study of the review process and its veracity and consistency in determining the trustworthiness of applicant repositories. Several assumptions underlie this work. First, audits and reviews must be based on evidence supplied by the repository under scrutiny; second, and not all reviewers will approach a piece of evidence in the same fashion or give it the same weight. Third, the value and veracity of required evidence may be subject to reviewers’ diverse perspectives and diverse repository community norms.

This research used a thematic qualitative analysis approach to identify similarities and differences in CoreTrustSeal reviewers’ responses during semi-structured interviews in order to better understand potential subjective differences among respondents. The participants’ non-probabilistic sample represented a balance in perspectives across three anticipated categories: administrator, archivist, and technologist.

Themes converged around several key concepts. Nearly all participants felt they were performing a peer review process and working to help the repository community and the research enterprise.

Reviewers were questioned about the various CoreTrustSeal application requirements and which ones they felt were the most important. No clear evidence emerged to indicate that variations in perspectives affected the subjective review of application evidence. The same categories of evidence were often selected and identified as being critical across all three categories (i.e., administrator, archivist, and technologist).

Many valuable suggestions from participants were recorded and can be implemented to ensure the consistency and sustainability of this trusted repository review process.

These suggestions and concepts were also very evenly distributed across the three perspectives. The balance in perspectives is potentially due to participants’ experience levels and their years of experience in various positions, holding many responsibilities, within the organizations they represented.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.17615/npck-km73