Trusted Digital Repository
The UK Data Archive provides the CoreTrustSeal certified Trusted Digital Repository component to the UK Data Service with a mission to provide reliable, long-term access to managed digital resources. We are at the forefront of defining, meeting and supporting the adoption of appropriate and universal standards.
Trust is critical to our mission: to support high quality social and economic research, teaching and learning through ensuring long-term access to quality economic and social data, supporting and promoting their use, value and impact.
Framework of trust
Any organisation that ensures data remain accessible and usable over a long period of time should be transparent about their practices. This includes ensuring that data has been protected from unintended change (its integrity) and communicating how data has been altered since its creation (its provenance) Data owners and data subjects trust the Archive to:
- look after information appropriately, providing access to authorised users
- curate deposited data, including making sure data are appropriately anonymised and internally consistent
- manage their data using robust information security protocols and processes
- monitor hardware and software developments and migrate data collections accordingly
- uplift our business and workflows to accommodate big and linked data in order to meet the needs of today's researchers
We use the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) for organisational structure and systems for archives with responsibility for preserving information and make it available to a Designated Community as defined in our Preservation policy (PDF).
