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Trust and Standards

CESSDA provides sustainable data services to researchers for societal benefit. CESSDA is committed to community principles that advance trust and open science, including FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), TRUST (Transparency, Responsibility, User focus, Sustainability, Technology) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics).  In particular, CESSDA fosters trust by ensuring that high-quality FAIR data are preserved for future research. Adoption of Trustworthy Digital Repository (TDR) practices strengthens compatibility across CESSDA Service Providers and improves the quality of data and services for researchers.

Each Service Provider works towards achieving the CoreTrustSeal certification. CCoreTrustSeal logooreTrustSeal defines trustworthy repository requirements in terms of organisational infrastructure, digital object management, technology and security. It is aligned with the OAIS model (ISO 14721:2025), has been acknowledged as important for enabling FAIR data, and is a recommended certification approach for data repositories within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). To date, more than half of the Service Providers have achieved CoreTrustSeal certification.

Experts from Service Providers with experience in trust standards and certification participate in the CESSDA Trust and Landscape Working Group. The Working Group supports the Service Providers in their journeys to increasing trustworthiness. The CESSDA trust support model has guided similar support programmes in EU-funded projects such as SSHOC, FAIRsFAIR and EOSC Nordic. 

The Trust and Landscape Working Group continues to collaborate with actors across the research data ecosystem to advance standards and good practices for trustworthy digital repositories. The Working Group can be contacted via trust@cessda.eu. 

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