TRUST to build Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs)

Digital repositories are information systems to collect, store, manage, preserve, and provide access to the content to the users.

TRUST to build Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs)

Digital repositories are information systems to collect, store, manage, preserve, and provide access to the content to the users. The content is either deposited by the content creator owner or third party. The collection is managed and curated by using standard metadata tools. The repository offers a minimum set of basic services eg. store, search, and access to the content.

A Concept of Trustworthy Digital Repositories has been evolved to increase the capability of the repositories in long term preservation, access and, build trust among the users about the sustainability and usefulness of these repositories over time. Developing trustworthy digital repositories will require the integration of new methods, policies, standards and technologies in the process of digital preservation.

What is digital preservation?

Digital preservation is the process of managing access to digital material irrespective of technological advances in a long time, making the format and media to access digital content obsolete.

According to a working group within the Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) to draft a definition for digital preservation during the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2007 Midwinter Meeting, “Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and born digital content regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time.” (http://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/preserv/defdigpres0408)

It is important to develop the trust between the repositories and the communities that they intended to serve. The users must have trust in the repositories about their reliability and capability of managing the data they hold. Digital preservation is the process of managing access to digital material irrespective of technological advances in a long time, making the format and media to access digital content obsolete.

TRUST Principles

All efforts in the information world revolve around the one aim of making information Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. FAIR Data Principles are a set of guiding principles that provide the framework for scientific data management. (https://librarycognizance.blogspot.com/2018/08/fair-data-principles-for-scientific.html). To keep that data FAIR over time in digital repositories. And to maintain the trustworthiness of digital repositories in communities they serve, TRUST principles came into existence after several months of consultation with RDA (Research Data Alliance and discussion within the digital repositories community.

TRUST principles are a set of guiding principles to ensure trustworthy data management in digital repositories. TRUST principles are endorsed by Open Data Preservation Foundation and are recently published (May 2020) as an article for Scientific Data. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-0486-7)

Open Preservation Foundation(OPF) is an independent, not for a profit membership organization, with a vision of open, sustainable preservation. It is an open-source community of digital preservation practitioners around the world. The organization provides practical digital preservation solutions and facilitates the best practices that support enduring access to digital collections.

According to Martin Wrigley, executive director of the Open Preservation Foundation, “We endorse these principles in our capacity as an advocate for best practice in digital preservation and in recognition of the fact that they are vital to securing a sustainable future for our digital information.”

Trust principles are a set of guiding principles that reminds the digital repositories stakeholders about the importance of developing and maintaining the repositories infrastructure in the way to cater to the needs of data to the community in a long run without any hindrance of technology change. TRUST is to build and maintain the trust of communities in the data repositories that they are reliable and capable of appropriately managing the data they hold.

Transparency

Transparency in the policies of any repository in areas like data deposition, data preservation, and data discovery. Clearly communicating the users about:

(i) policies in terms of the use of data holdings and digital preservation policies.
(ii) features and services that give an indication about the capability of repositories in holding sensitive data.

Responsibility

How responsible a digital repository is demonstrated by how well the data in repositories are managed by following metadata standards compliant with the community norms, which enhance the discoverability and usefulness of data. Responsibility involves:

(i) technical validation, documentation, quality control, authenticity protection, and long term preservation of data.

(ii) privacy and protection of sensitive information.

(iii)managing the intellectual property rights of data producers.

User Focus

Each digital repository should embed the best data practices being followed in its users’ communities. The user community involves the data depositors, users accessing data, funders, journal editors, institutions related to that community. User focus of the repository is demonstrated by:

(i) continuously monitoring and identifying the community changing expectations and needs with time and

(ii) evolving best practices to meet these requirements.

Sustainability

Sustainability involves ensuring:

(i) uninterrupted access to its data holdings for current and future user communities.

(ii) planning for disaster recovery, risk mitigation, and long term preservation of data. (iii) Securing funding to enable ongoing usage and to maintain successful rendering of services.

Technology

Technology involves:

(i) the fitness and maintenance of software, hardware tools to run a data repository.

(ii) proactive decisions and preparations to incorporate new tools and technical services to ensure uninterrupted access to data when technology changes and a mechanism to prevent, detect and respond to security threats

(iii) implementing appropriate standards, technologies, and tools for data management and curation.

TRUST principles give the benefit to both digital repositories and the user communities. A digital repository infrastructure built on these principles develops trust among user communities that they are capable of fulfilling their needs, protecting the data they hold, preserving for the long term, and enabling access to the data in the future also despite technology changes. The repositories based on TRUST principles are called Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs).

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