Core Certification: New Common Requirements for Trustworthy Digital Repositories

If we want to be able to share data, we need to store them in a trustworthy digital repository. Data created and used by scientists should be managed, curated, and archived in such a way to preserve the initial investment in collecting them. Researchers must be certain that data held in archives remain useful and meaningful into the future. Funding authorities increasingly require continued access to data produced by the projects they fund, and have made this an important element in Data Management Plans.Nowadays certification standards for data repositories are available at different levels, from a core level to extended and formal levels. Even at the basic level, certification offers many benefits to a repository and its stakeholders.Core certification involves a minimally intensive process whereby digital repositories supply evidence that they are sustainable and trustworthy. Both the Data Seal of Approval as well as the ICSU/World Data System offer a basic certification standard.Within the framework of the Research Data Alliance these two communities have now created a new set of harmonized Common Requirements for certification of repositories at the basic level, drawing from their respective criteria. In this presentation these new common requirements, that will replace the existing ones in the course of 2016, will be presented.