Our mission
Research data and especially ESS data is often highly relevant for many different scientific approaches and disciplines long after its creation. Securing the long-term availability, interpretability and reusability of relevant ESS data in the long-term perspective, beyond a retention period of 10 years, is therefore of utmost importance for the ESS community. Yet, huge amounts of data from various sources are still being lost, because of insufficient measure to preserve the data. Our aim is to contribute to the improvement and advancement of sustainable solutions to the long-term preservation of ESS data as well as offer the ESS community materials, guidelines and articles as an easy access point to challenges, strategies and solutions to long-term preservation of ESS data.
Community engagement
A successful long-term preservation of research data and ESS data requires the collaborative and cooperative community effort involving many different stakeholders within the scientific community, such as researcher as data producers and data users, data stewards, as well as institutional players such as repositories and infrastructure providers. To bring together different perspectives as well as get community input and feedback on long-term storage and long-term archiving of ESS data we established the NFDI4Earth Interest Group Long-term Storage and Archiving (IG LTA). The IG LTA is open to all interested individuals, functioning as a community forum for discussion and exchange on all relevant aspects of long term preservation of ESS data.
Our services and support
We are providing a growing number of Living Handbook articles, which will be available via the OneStop4All, offering a more generic entry point for the ESS community and beyond on various topics of long-term preservation. Furthermore, ESS-specific guidelines, such as "Guidelines for the preparation of data for archiving", "Guidelines for repository providers" and "Guidelines for the appraisal of ESS data for long-term preservation and archiving" will be provided, addressing various stakeholders in the ESS community.