Project results are expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:

• A European network of trustworthy repositories is established that will enhance the EOSC ecosystem, contribute to the consolidation of Open Science practices and support European researchers.
• The concept and requirements of trustworthy repositories are harmonised and therefore support the European funders in better addressing the Open Science provisions in their programmes
• Data depositing ecosystem in Europe are adequately supported, providing a common voice for research digital repositories to better interact with the research and innovation policy making and to respond in a more coordinated and cohesive manner to the need of the European researchers.

Providing access to data is one of the key elements of Open Science that promotes sound, and reproducible scientific research. Implementation of FAIR data principles throughout the research data life cycle is a key goal of the European Open Science Cloud and digital repositories are the first line of implementation of such principles. For many funding programmes in Europe, researchers have the obligation to deposit their data in repositories that ensure provision of Persistent and Unique Identifiers (PID), community accepted metadata schemas, data access and usage licences, that in sum are trustworthy. There is currently no generally accepted list of such repositories, whereas general registries of repositories list more than 2,000 of them. However, the maturity and trustworthiness of these repositories is difficult to assess. Identifying an appropriate repository can therefore be a challenging task for researchers, their organisations, and funding organisations. In some disciplines, researchers work with discipline-specific repositories which already have certain policies and standards in place that meet the needs of the specific community. Other repositories serve a more general research public, and their policies and standards are necessarily more generic as well. Some repositories have been certified as trustworthy repositories by one of several acknowledged certification bodies.

In Horizon Europe the Commission has introduced the definition of trusted repositories^[1]; such definition is in line with the commonly accepted definition of trustworthy repository.

EOSC, among its objectives, aims at federating European trustworthy repositories to enhance access and use of research data. While the federated environment provides a technical interconnection, the creation of a collaborative network of trusted repositories will be able to enhance the quality and responsiveness of the entire EOSC ecosystem as piloted by the Horizon 2020 project FAIRsFAIR. Such network could build upon existing initiatives that already highlight a sizeable list of repositories such as those that are certified CoreTrustSeal or NestorSeal, that are part of thematic or geographical coordination network like CLARIN, SSHOC, CESSDA or national open science clouds.

This network could also make use of the current effort of technology providers, within EOSC and beyond, that offer technology solutions that support digital preservation, develop innovative services and improve the technical connection among the repositories. The mutual learning and peer-to-peer support that the network should promote and implement, may strongly affect the adoption of FAIR practices and services and establish common programmes for training. Moreover, repositories differently from libraries, have not yet consolidated a European wide representation that could be achieved though the European network of trustworthy repositories.

The proposals under this topic should address the following actions, and could use the support to third party granting mechanism where such support would be an added value:

• Create a European network of trustworthy digital repositories following FAIR-enabling principles with disciplinary and geographical spread to:
  • Foster the harmonisation of the definition of trusted repositories generically and per discipline
  • Support repositories to achieve such status and be a recognised authoritative source of quality data
  • Assist new repositories with consolidated requirements and peer to peer support
• Build a lean governance for the network to moderate, coordinate and provide common directionality and a common legal understanding within the repositories and a common voice with stakeholders and policymaker ecosystems e.g. to secure adequate funding, stronger representation in the EOSC environment, etc.
• Enhance the technical federation with standards, APIs and solutions that could enhance the access to resources, including machine to machine interaction e.g. to ensure users can access data in one repository through another, to allow repositories in the network to offer each other back up services, etc.
• Increment the framework of services of repositories in the network notably for storage, curation and also for innovative solutions (such as on-demand or in-house provisioning of digital repositories as a service ) that will support institutions and communities;
• Promote stable general and discipline-oriented initiatives to support consolidation of metadata schemas and vocabularies, standards in formats and services and to foster interoperability.

To ensure complementarity of outcomes, proposals are expected to cooperate and align with activities of the EOSC Partnership and to coordinate with relevant initiatives and projects contributing to the development of EOSC. Notably, synergies and complementarities should be sought with projects funded under the topics HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05, and should continue to build on outcomes from the Horizon 2020 project FAIRsFAIR. Close cooperation is also expected with the projects funded under the topics HORIZON-INFRA-2023-EOSC-01-01, and HORIZON-INFRA-2024-EOSC-01-04.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/common/guidance/aga_en.pdf