TRUST Principles in Fairdata Services
Fairdata services have officially endorsed TRUST principles, which demonstrate digital repository trustworthiness.
What are TRUST Principles?
Transparency, Responsibility, User focus, Sustainability and Technology (TRUST, in short) bring together important repository functions. Read more about them in the article The TRUST Principles for Digital Repositories. A quick recap can also be found on Research Data Alliance’s (RDA) web page here.
See also FAIR Principles in Fairdata and EOSC FIDELIS Network of Trustworthy Repositories that the Fairdata services belong to.
TRUST Principles are realised in Fairdata Services in the following ways:
Transparency
Fairdata services and their use are well documented and information is openly available:
- Service description is available in CSC’s Service Catalog
- Terms of Use, user guides and API-documentation are available at fairdata.fi and digitalpreservation.fi
- Metax-API and its documentation offer transparent information about metadata schemas, authentication, versioning and data lifecycle
- Checksums of published data are publicly available via Etsin to ensure data integrity
Responsibility
Fairdata services are responsible of data and its usability:
- Clear roles for data producers, dataset admins, and service admins
- Every dataset gets a persistent identifier (PID), and changes to published data require dataset versioning
- Metadata schema is based on DCAT 3.0 standard and national guidelines
- Mandatory metadata fields ensure findability and intelligibility
- Integrity of published data is automatically checked and possible issues are fixed in co-operation with the user
- The rights to the data stored in Fairdata services remain with the owner of the dataset
User Focus
Fairdata services are designed to meet the needs of researchers and organisations:
- Service development is ongoing:
- Users can provide feedback to us directly
- Organisations can take part in Fairdata service development through Fairdata Network and Fairdata Cooperative Development
- Datasets go from the services to the national research.fi -portal and from there to the European OpenAIRE -portal
- Statistics for views and downloads are available for every dataset
- User interfaces have been tested and guides include examples and tutorials
- Users are reminded of describing and publishing their data
- Service usage statistics and quality deviations are reported annually
Sustainability
Fairdata services are part of national research infrastructure:
- Strategic governance and funding ensure service continuity
- Persistent identifiers and versioning support long-term use of data
- Data stored in the services is replicated to ensure fixity
- Digital Preservation uses approved file formats and international metadata standards (METS, PREMIS)
- Business continuity plans and the work of steering group support service sustainability
- Services (service rooms, administration, development) are located in Finland
Technology
Modern and open technologies ensure scalability and interoperability:
- Services are based on open source and standardised API’s
- Services are part of CSC’s ISO 27001 -certified security system, that includes continuity and recovery plans