Earlier this week DataShare received the Data Seal of Approval – a peer review certification for trusted digital repository (TDR) status. The award is reviewed every two-years.

Edinburgh DataShare self-assessment statements for each of the 16 metrics (which express roles and responsibilities of data producer, data repository and data consumer) can be viewed on the DSA website at: https://assessment.datasealofapproval.org/assessment_175/seal/pdf/ (note: liberal use of white space). We aim to publish the actual seal on the home page of DataShare as part of the upcoming major release (2.0).

For more information about DSA see our web page, http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/research-support/data-library/data-repository/trustworthiness

Note: a paper will be published in the forthcoming IASSIST Quarterly showcasing institutional implementations of DSA. This follows on from a successful panel session at the IASSIST Conference at Univ. Minneapolis in June (see: http://iassist2015.pop.umn.edu/program/block6#a4)

DSA are also currently in discussion with ICSU World Data System to produce a harmonised discipline-agnostic self-assessment TDR certification scheme. This should be in place some time in 2016.

Stuart Macdonald
Associate Data Librarian