Template for preparing a cessation plan

Digital preservation entails the need to maintain the accessibility and usability of digital assets for the long term—potentially beyond the lifetime of the repository in which they were initially published. To prepare for a potential cessation scenario and the handover of (parts of) the data collection to another repository, members of the German Network of Educational Research Data (VerbundFDB) created this template. Using guiding questions, the template helps repositories to collate information about the data collection, organisational, technical, and legal aspects relevant to a potential data custody transfer. This can facilitate the discovery of potential gaps in the workflows and documentation, at the same time as structuring communication with potential target repositories.