After a remarkably short review process for a first-time application, the Data Archive for Social Sciences in Italy (DASSI) has received its CoreTrustSeal certification, recognising its commitment to trustworthy and sustainable research data management.

The certification is valid from 10 July 2026 to 9 July 2029 and was awarded under the CoreTrustSeal Requirements 2023–2025.

CoreTrustSeal is an international, community-based, non-governmental, and non-profit organisation that provides core-level certification for trustworthy data repositories. Its requirements address the key characteristics repositories need to demonstrate in areas including organisational infrastructure, digital object management, preservation, access and technical security.

DASSI is Italy’s national Service Provider within CESSDA ERIC and is jointly managed by the University of Milan-Bicocca (UNIMIB) and the National Research Council (CNR). Since 2021, it has been recognised in this role by Italy’s Ministry of Universities and Research. Its mission is to preserve and share social science research data, making them findable, accessible and reusable for researchers in Italy and internationally.

DASSI were guided through the application process by CESSDA’s Trust and Landscape Working Group, led by Mari Kleemola (FSD). Maaike Verburg (pictured below), a member of the Working Group, was very pleased with the smoothness of the application process, as she congratulated DASSI on its new certification: 

"DASSI dedicated a significant amount of time to the preparations of their first CoreTrustSeal application, taking time to ensure their self-assessment was in great shape before submission. We reviewed small sets of Requirements at a time until everything was deemed ready. The attention to detail and dedication to the work paid off with a relatively quick and smooth CoreTrustSeal review process, resulting in a rewarding seal of trustworthiness.”

The CoreTrustSeal assessment examined DASSI’s policies and practices across the full research data lifecycle. These include defined procedures for data deposit and appraisal, documentation and metadata creation, rights management, quality assurance and long-term preservation. DASSI uses the OAIS model for preservation and makes archived datasets available through its Dataverse-based catalogue, where they can be identified and cited using persistent identifiers.

The assessment also highlights DASSI’s use of international standards and CESSDA resources. Its metadata model is based on the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and aligned with the CESSDA Metadata Model, while CESSDA controlled vocabularies and the ELSST thesaurus support interoperability and data discovery.

For DASSI, the certification process was also an opportunity to strengthen the repository itself. In its application feedback, the team noted that producing evidence for the requirements helped increase its awareness of both the strengths and areas for further development within the archive.

The certification marks an important milestone, not only for DASSI, as it further strengthens the network of trusted research data repositories across CESSDA.

"The Trust & Landscape Working Group is happy to see more and more Service Providers dedicate effort to their first CoreTrustSeal submissions. It is a non-trivial investment of time and resources, but a rewarding process that contributes to a more trustworthy research ecosystem. We are happy CESSDA continues to facilitate our dedicated support, so we can assist our partners in reaching their goals,” said Maaike Verburg.