The EOSC EDEN consortium has finalised the list of priority services that will be developed and refined during the remainder of the project.
Since the start of the project, EOSC EDEN has focused on identifying and assessing candidate services that can strengthen digital preservation capabilities within the European research and repository landscape. This initial phase involved gathering evidence to justify service needs and mapping proposed services against key project outputs, including the Core Preservation Processes, User Journey Maps, and the attributes defined for the EOSC EDEN registry which are currently being encoded into RDF in this GitHub repository to make it machine-readable and interoperable.
This work resulted in a broad portfolio of potential services addressing a wide range of preservation, interoperability, and repository management challenges. To ensure the project could make sustainable and impactful investments, the consortium undertook a prioritisation process to narrow the scope and identify the most valuable services for implementation and further development.
The prioritisation process combined several inputs, including the earlier mappings and analyses, partner expertise and interests, and feedback from the wider community. A dedicated community survey played a central role in this process, giving repository managers, repository staff, and other stakeholders the opportunity to help shape the project’s direction by indicating which services they considered most valuable and relevant.
Based on the survey results and consortium discussions, EOSC EDEN has now established a committed set of priority services that will form the focus of the project moving forward.
Selected Priority Services
File Format Service
The File Format Service focuses on improving the exchange and reuse of file format and preservation information across institutions. As mature file format identification tools already exist, EOSC EDEN will not develop another identification solution. Instead, the service will provide an interoperability layer through which systems can share information such as file format knowledge, preservation policies and recommended tools.
Data Quality Service
The Data Quality Service evaluates contextual data quality against configurable rules and policies. The service provides detailed assessment results that support decisions on data suitability for preservation, curation, and reuse.
Both on-demand and scheduled evaluations are supported, enabling repositories to integrate quality monitoring into their regular workflows.
Policy Service
The Policy Service helps make repository and service policies easier to discover, understand, and compare. By automatically identifying policy statements and related documents from websites, the service extracts and classifies policy information, mapping it to policy related activity vocabulary. This enables consistent policy analysis, supports integration with metadata registries and monitoring systems, and contributes to greater transparency and interoperability across the EOSC ecosystem.
Metadata Extraction Service
The Metadata Extraction Service provides a standardized way to extract technical metadata from digital files for use in preservation workflows. As no single tool can extract all relevant metadata for every file format, the service can combine multiple existing extraction tools and select the most appropriate ones based on the file format. By exposing these tools through a common interface, the service aims to make technical metadata more consistent, interoperable, and reusable across preservation systems. In addition, it will enrich the File Format Library with recommended metadata extraction tools for each supported format, helping ensure better tool selection and improved metadata quality across the ecosystem.
License Compatibility & Guidance Service
The License Compatibility & Guidance Service helps repositories and researchers better understand dataset licensing and reuse conditions. The service provides information on repository licenses, machine-readable compatibility matrices, and interactive guidance tools to support the selection of compatible licenses for aggregated, combined, or remixed datasets.
Metadata Transformation Service
The Metadata Transformation Service (MTS) transforms metadata between different schemas, schema versions and serialization formats. This supports interoperability between repository systems and preservation services. At the moment, these transformations often require custom mappings and implementations for the specific schemas and formats involved. The MTS will provide a reusable way to perform these transformations using metadata crosswalks. It will also support conversions between serialization formats, such as JSON and XML. This will make it easier to exchange and reuse metadata and preservation information across different systems.
SIP2AIP Factory
The SIP2AIP Factory accepts multiple Submission Information Package (SIP) formats and converts them into a standard Archival Information Package (AIP) format. This improves interoperability between Trusted Digital Repositories and simplifies the creation of archival packages.
The service also records descriptions of both the original SIP and the generated AIP, supporting future migration, restructuring, and exchange of archival packages between systems and organisations.
External/Existing services
Alongside the prioritised EOSC EDEN services, the project will continue to investigate a number of existing services. Several of these services have already been mapped to the initial inventory of services identified during the landscape analysis. The project will now further elaborate their potential for reuse and integration in support of digital preservation and automated curation, helping to build on existing solutions where appropriate and maximise interoperability across the ecosystem.
Looking Ahead
With the prioritisation phase now completed, EOSC EDEN will now begin translating the prioritised services into detailed service specifications. Building on the evidence gathering and mappings conducted so far, the project will further develop the requirements, functionality, interoperability considerations, and implementation approaches for each selected service.
Stay tuned for updates!