Selecting a trustworthy subject-specific repository for self-depositing data: methodology and analysis of existing services
Research Data College
July 2024 (translated in November 2024)
On March 3, 2023, the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research gave the Research Data College of the French Committee for Open Science the two-fold mission of:
- Proposing a definition of the trustworthy criteria for assessing the quality of a repository against the FAIRisation data objectives.
- Working to identify subject-specific trustworthy repositories suitable for harvesting by Recherche Data Gouv.
The Recherche Data Gouv ecosystem provides research teams with a multidisciplinary service for depositing, publishing and reporting their data in synergy with subject-specific and institutional repositories. Accordingly, it is essential to identify trustworthy subject-based French and international repositories, whether they are CoreTrustSealcertified or not, so that research teams can be guided towards the most suitable repository for sharing and opening data in their discipline.
As a result, this briefing note suggests a method for identifying recommended subject-specific repositories for communities so they can self-deposit data, together with an initial list derived from the selected analysis criteria framework. It is based on the work undertaken since 2022 by the Research Data College of the Committee for Open Science. The French Ministry of Higher Education and Research specifically commissioned the Research Data College to draw up a list of criteria to guide the selection of trustworthy subject-specific repositories for depositing and publishing datasets, prioritising the most active/organised disciplines in terms of data management.
In accordance with the Charter of the Colleges and expert groups of the Committee for Open Science (May 2023), the list of trustworthy repositories drawn up by the Research Data College is the subject of regular exchanges with the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. The latter carries out the final validation before sending the list to the appropriate organisations for dissemination.
