The CoreTrustSeal Board is sharing this discussion paper for community comment as a first step towards reaching consensus on the topic of curation and preservation levels.

Applying appropriate levels of curation and preservation to digital objects maximises the long term return on investment in data assets. Curation and Long-term preservation depend on a repository having the rights, and taking the responsibility to provide an organisational infrastructure, digital object management and technical/security setting that is capable of supporting this service.

The CoreTrustSeal Requirements (v2.0 and proposed v3.0) request information about the levels of curation an applicant offers. These reflect an assumption that applicants must take responsibility for active long term digital preservation for a designated community. As the issues of curation, preservation and certification are receiving more attention from a wider range of actors, the need for clearer specification of preservation levels has become clear.

The CoreTrustSeal Board sees this as an important issue for the data management community, for defining which applicants are in-scope for certification, and for better defining ‘non-preservation’ data and metadata services. In addition to revision of the CoreTrustSeal requirements there are a number of other open consultations such as the COAR Community Framework for Good Practices in Repositories and the NDSA Levels of Preservation.

The paper can be found here: CoreTrustSeal Standards and Certification Board. (2022). Curation & Preservation Levels: CoreTrustSeal Discussion Paper (v01.00). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6908019.

We invite your comments on the paper – these can be shared with us through our Contact page or on Twitter.