ARCHIVER

Brief description

Digital preservation involves a series of activities necessary to ensure continued access to research data for as long as necessary while keeping its intellectual control. Many research projects are currently struggling to preserve their data and associated products (metadata, software, documentation, etc.), as the current archiving and preservation capabilities are inadequate in terms of scale and fall below expectations, while data stewardship costs are frequently underestimated.

Between 2019 and June 2022 the ARCHIVER Pre-Commercial Procurement supplemented this gap by developing innovative services for the Long Term Digital Preservation (LTDP) of scientific datasets.

Through an open and competitive Pre-Commercial Procurement process ARCHIVER selected high-tech industry consortia to build archival and preservation services made available to European researcher communities through the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). 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 - expressed their interest in the ARCHIVER solutions.

Our Role

While leading the communication and outreach campaign of the ARCHIVER project, Trust-IT was responsible for raising awareness about the ARCHIVER project across all the phases of the pre-commercial procurement, including:

• Making sure that the tender was appropriately disseminated in all the EU member states and H2020 associated countries.
• Engaging with Early Adopters, accessing the R&D results and testing the services deployed in the ARCHIVER project.
• Disseminating the results of the pilot phase and stimulate the uptake of the solutions developed. 

_{Video prepared by Trust-IT for the Digital Preservation Awards 2022, where ACHIVER was Awarded for Collaboration and Cooperation by the Digital Preservation Coalition}

Impact

Data is now called digital gold. But the EU-funded ARCHIVER project says that “the reality is a bit more complex.” 
It’s true that data is incredibly important and valuable, but archiving is just as important to ensure that research remains accessible for as long as needed, while maintaining its integrity. “Data is king when digital preservation can ensure continued access to the research for as long as necessary while maintaining its intellectual control,” said João Fernandes, project leader at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) and ARCHIVER project coordinator. “Unfortunately, due to a lack of cost planning and to solutions falling short, most research projects struggle to properly preserve their data for the long run.”

ARCHIVER commercial suppliers created long-term data preservation solutions for archiving, protecting and accessing huge and highly valuable sets of scientific data. The ARCHIVER project itself was crowned with the 2022 Digital Preservation Award for Collaboration and Cooperation. The award celebrates the project’s significant collaboration across institutional, professional, sectoral and geographic boundaries and the demonstratable impact this collaboration has had on digital preservation.
 

Results

Communication, dissemination, and engagement activities have focused on the launch and the promotion of the different phases of the pre-commercial procurement and their results to various stakeholders across the EU Member States and Associated Countries.

• Organization of 2 kick-off events announcing the consortia selected to proceed to the next stages of the project, with 160+ participants registered for the design phase kick-off event and 150+ for the prototype phase kick-off event.
• Promotion of the Tender at key events: Visibility towards some of the major Open Science conferences in Europe, such as the EOSC Hub 2021 event (320+ participants) , the Open Science Fair 2021 (370+), the CHEP conference (500+), IDCC2020 (230+), EOSC hub week 2020 (800+).
• Promotion of the Early Adopters programme: 10+ early adopters enrolled in the programme by the Prototype and 5 different use cases presented online. Additional organisations expressed the interest of joining the programme by the Pilot Phase.
• Promotion of the tender award and kick-off of the Design Phase via a web marketing & social media campaigns: 
  300+ Twitter followers and 500+ LinkedIn Connections by January 2021, 140+ downloads of the Tender information package with 15 bids submitted.

Funding

ARCHIVER - Archiving and Preservation for Research Environments project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824516.