ARCHIVER announces the two prototypes moving on to the Pilot Phase

According to the UNESCO definition, “digital preservation consists of the processes aimed at ensuring the continued accessibility of digital materials. To do this involves finding ways to re-present what was originally presented to users by a combination of software and hardware tools acting on data”. Digital preservation has emerged in recent years as a fast-moving and growing community of practice that is of ubiquitous relevance, but in which capability is unevenly distributed. Research disciplines have made a substantial and early contribution to the field, not least through investments of the European Commission. Digital preservation in the research community has a close alignment to the FAIR principles and is delivered, albeit unevenly, through a complex specialist infrastructure comprising not simply technology but also capacity of staff and 'know why' of policy.

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative has extensively worked to promote and enable access to Open Science data with the stated aim of ensuring that researchers can maximize the value of their research processes and shared large-scale Research Infrastructures (RIs). The importance of advanced long-term preservation to allow reproducibility of research results is emphasised by the EOSC Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) and different reports of relevant bodies such as the Digital Preservation Coalition. 

ARCHIVER is providing a substantial contribution to this vision.  Started in January 2019, ARCHIVER is a unique initiative currently running in the EOSC framework that is competitively procuring R&D services for archiving and digital preservation. The ARCHIVER tenderers were selected through an open and competitive procurement process. Between December 2020 and August 2021 three consortia worked on innovative, prototype solutions for Long-term data preservation, in close collaboration with CERN, EMBL-EBI, DESY and PIC. Many Research institutes - such as the European Institute of Oncology (IEO), ARDC, the Stockholm University Library, JISC, SurfSara and others - have already expressed their interest in the ARCHIVER solutions by joining the group of Early Adopters, which will be part of the EOSC Marketplace.

Two consortia selected to implement the Pilot solution

The selection process for proceeding to the next phase is now over and the consortia selected to continue with the pilot phase were officially announced on the public ceremony on 29th of November: the consortium lead by Arkivum in partnership with Google Cloud, and the consortium lead by LIBNOVA in collaboratio with CSIC, University of Barcelona, Giaretta Associates, AWS, Voxility and Bidaidea.

Our Role

As a Pre-Commercial Procurement, the implementation of the overall procurement process follows a precise scheme articulated around different phases. All these phases have different objectives and outcomes, and therefore different communication, dissemination, and stakeholder engagement purposes. While leading the communication and outreach campaign of the ARCHIVER project, Trust-IT coordinated the project efforts to make sure that the tender was appropriately disseminated in all the EU member states and H2020 associated countries as well as disseminate the results of each of the pre-commercial procurement phases. Together with CERN, ARCHIVER coordinator, Trust-IT designed and organised the Award Ceremonies of each phase, including the last one that marked the start of the last, pilot phase of the project. Sara Pittonet Gaiarin, Senior Project Manager at Trust-IT, moderated the Public Award Ceremony that took place Virtually on Monday 29th November.

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Article by

Sara Pittonet Gaiarin
Senior Project Manager at Trust-IT Services