Each national Service Provider works towards achieving the Trustworthy Digital Repository (TDR) standard selected by CESSDA: the CoreTrustSeal.

The CoreTrustSeal defines repository requirements in terms of organisational infrastructure, digital object management, technology and security. Trust is essential between CESSDA Service Providers and with their data depositors and users.

Since CESSDA selected the internationally recognised CoreTrustSeal it has been acknowledged as important for enabling FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data and has become the recommended certification approach for data repositories within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Service Providers with experience of trust standards and certification form the Trust group, and every CESSDA member and aspiring member has a key contact to represent them on trust issues.

To date more than half of Service Providers have achieved certification and have entered the three year renewal cycle of reassessment. CESSDA work on trust continues to guide and support these repositories and more recent CESSDA members on a range of issues and standards relating to trusted data and services.