Digital objects are the primary reusable assets of federated research infrastructures and therefore an understanding of the criteria and the decisions that inform retention and the level of care is vital to the future and continued success of EOSC.
There is the need for additional work on retention, appraisal, and re-appraisal of digital objects as a continuous process to evaluate a digital object with a view to retaining it, assigning or changing a level of care, or deleting it. A clear and defined (re)appraisal cycle is a dependency for informed and transparent decisions around the proper level of care. The growth in data production through research and of relevance to research, with an associated increase in costs and demand for limited storage capacity, implies a need for clearer criteria around what should be kept and cared for, including through long-term preservation.
TF will provide feedback and recommendations on retention, curation, and preservation and produce a landscape report on the different scientific community’s status, needs and challenges in data retention, appraisal, and re-appraisal to make strategic recommendations on continued actions (SRIA, MAR).
