Established in 1976, with DANS’ predecessor the Steinmetz Archive among its founding organisations, CESSDA is one of the world’s oldest distributed research data infrastructures. Long before the TRUST principles were formally published in 2018 (Lin, D., Crabtree, J., Dillo, I. et al. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0486-7), CESSDA had already embedded the values of Transparency, Responsibility, User focus, Sustainability and Technology (TRUST) in its governance and operations.
The new brief explains how CESSDA puts these principles into practice through its governance, policies, shared standards and coordinated infrastructure services. It shows how CESSDA supports the ethical, secure and sustainable management of research data for the long-term benefit of research and society.
The publication was prepared by the CESSDA Trust and Landscape Working Group, which promotes trustworthiness across the CESSDA network and supports Service Providers in meeting recognised standards such as CoreTrustSeal certification. DANS colleagues Maaike Verburg and Shanmugasundaram Venkataraman contribute to this working group.
Like FAIR, TRUST provides a shared framework for good practice. Many of the values reflected in the TRUST principles have long been embedded in the repository community and are now explicitly articulated through the TRUST framework. By publishing this brief, CESSDA provides greater transparency about its policies, services and support for its Service Providers. It also gives researchers insight into the standards that Service Providers such as DANS work towards.
The brief is available here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20281957.
DANS is the Dutch Service Provider within CESSDA. Through this role, we contribute to a European research infrastructure that supports trustworthy, sustainable and interoperable research data services.
