Concept for Setting up an LTA Working Group in the NFDI Section "Common Infrastructures"

Long-term access and preservation (LTA)1 for each kind of digital resource has been a recurring problem for over 30 years and requires an ongoing investment of resources, as well as an ongoing adaptation of processes to the ever-changing technological capabilities and needs. At the same time it gains urgency with the exponential growth and complexity of research data, whether it involves demands from funders or from science itself, business, or society. The retention terms depend on these requirements. The DFG requirement2 to keep research data available “at least” for 10 years from creation demands for a minimal archival period. Still, longer retention times can apply, up to permanence, as is usual for cultural or arts and humanities data, geology, certain biosphere and climate data.NFDI consortia have a variety of disparate and distributed information infrastructures that share a high potential of interoperability. A major goal of NFDI is to use this potential to create a Research Data Commons (RDC)3. The evolving RDC concept includes shared cloud services, an application layer with access to high-performance computing (HPC) and other external services, collaborative workspaces, terminology services, and a common authentication and authorization infrastructure (AAI). The necessary interoperability of services requires, in particular, agreement on protocols and standards, the specification of workflows and interfaces, and the definition of long-term sustainable responsibilities for overarching services and deliverables. This is demanding if one regards single infrastructure components which might be well-tested in NFDI on a domain-specific basis, but are quite heterogeneous and diverse between domains.Against this background, the integration of LTA into the RDC of the NFDI is an urgent desideratum in order to be able to guarantee the permanent availability and usability of research data.4 A distinction must be made between the archiving of digital objects as “a physical object, a logical object, and a conceptual object”.5 The most important task is to record the semantic and software-technical context in which these objects perform. The working group “aims to identify and harmonize methods, procedures, and techniques for long-term preservation and use of data and software as reproducible information objects” from which a digital preservation base service may be developed.6 Parts of relevant requirements specified by consortia have already been set as national or international standards like ISO 14721, ISO 16363, ISO 17068, ISO 24143, the CoreTrustSeal, DIN 31644 and DIN 31645 or frameworks like the TRUST principles7. To ensure professional LTA, it is paramount to understand these principles and apply them to the pertinent data. NFDI consortia must be enabled to cater for their needs with regard to content preservation by taking existing research data services into account and evaluating them in context of these principles.Consequently, as long as sufficient resources are available, the working group will promote LTA-awareness and provide consultation for consortia. Furthermore, the working group intends to recommend suitable LTA-focused standards to NFDI and the Research Data Commons, as well as input to RDC development on the technical level. It may focus on quality control and provenance and intends to expand international networking and participation in developing international resources relevant for LTA.The working group assembles members of various NFDI consortia covering the arts and humanities, sciences and engineering disciplines and experts from a variety of related infrastructures with strong connections to the nestor digital preservation competence network.8 The close linkage of NFDI consortia with partners in the field of LTA brings together two required areas of expertise: a) that of the state of the art of LTA and b) the knowledge of data producers about contexts of data origin and data users. This composition enables the group to do both: to take an overarching view that spans the requirements of the disciplines and consortia and to take into account interdisciplinary needs, and at the same time brings in the existing know-how into the infrastructure sector.