Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs) increasingly depend on external or shared technical services for storage, preservation, authentication, infrastructure, semantic services and other capabilities. But when several organisations contribute to a repository service, who is responsible for what – and how can those responsibilities remain transparent and trustworthy?
The new FIDELIS milestone MS15 – Baseline for cooperation between network members and technical repository service providers establishes a common foundation for addressing these questions. It explores how TDRs and Technical Repository Service Providers (TRSPs) can cooperate while maintaining clear governance, responsibilities and accountability.
A key message of the report is that performing a function and remaining accountable for it are not always the same. A repository may rely on a service provider to implement particular technical functions or preservation processes, but this does not necessarily transfer accountability. For certified repositories in particular, services can be delegated while the repository remains responsible for demonstrating that applicable trustworthiness requirements are met.
Rather than introducing another set of requirements, MS15 shows how existing frameworks can provide a shared language for describing these relationships. It draws on the FIDELIS Transparent Trustworthy Repository Attributes Matrix (TTRAM) and the Core Preservation Processes (CPPs) developed by EOSC EDEN. These frameworks can help repositories and providers identify which functions are in scope, who performs them, where responsibilities are shared, what evidence is needed and where expectations remain unclear.
The report identifies five principles for trustworthy TDR–TRSP cooperation: transparency, evidence for trust, accountability, interoperability, and portability and resilience. Together, they emphasise that trustworthy federation requires more than technical interoperability. Technical services must also be supported by appropriate policies, evidence, agreements, continuity arrangements and clearly understood responsibility boundaries.
MS15 illustrates this through practical examples from Finland, Switzerland and France, covering national infrastructure, external service provider, host-institution infrastructure and semantic service models. These examples show that there is no single cooperation model. The key is that dependencies and responsibilities are explicit, documented and supported by appropriate evidence and agreements.
The baseline is intended as a starting point rather than final operational guidance. FIDELIS will test and refine the cooperation model with the FIDELIS Network and the wider repository community, including through additional real-world use cases.
The work will also inform the next stages of FIDELIS, including D6.2,which will develop more practical recommendations for organisational interoperability.
Learn more: Liberante, F., Bäckman, S., Farrell, G., Foltanyi, F., Genova, F., Huber, R., Jonquet, C., Kaartinen, H., Kleemola, M., Lammert, A., L'Hours, H., Mendes de Farias, T., Parkes, O., Recker, J., Sima, A. C., Trognitz, M., Verburg, M., & Weissman, P. (2026). MS15 – Baseline for cooperation between network members and technical repository service providers (Version 1.0). Zenodo.