Guidelines for the Appraisal of ESS Data for Long-Term Preservation and Archiving (NFDI4Earth Deliverable D2.4.6)

Securing the long-term preservation of relevant data is an essential component of sustainable data culture and responsible research data management within Earth System Sciences (ESS) and science in general. ESS relies heavily on the availability of temporal-spatial data about the current and past state of the Earth. Consequently, a vast amount of data is being collected and produced in various processing levels and variations, not all of which has a lasting value beyond the original framework it was created for. Thus, it is essential to have clear appraisal processes and frameworks in place for assessing, filtering, and selecting the data of lasting value that has to be preserved in the long term. This document provides guidance and suggestions on how an approach to appraisal of ESS data could be designed. On the one hand, these guidelines intend to illustrate the importance of appraisal as a critical aspect within research data management as well as raise awareness to existing appraisal practices and their potential applicability for research data. On the other hand, these guidelines aim to outline core appraisal criteria for ESS as well as offer suggestions for a cooperative approach to appraisal processes and frameworks in ESS. Given the relevance of appraisal throughout the data life cycle, the target group of these guidelines are data producers, infrastructure providers for long-term preservation, and stakeholders shaping the overall data culture in ESS alike.