Towards a COST MOBILISE Guideline for Long Term Preservation and Archiving of Data Constructs from Scientific Collections Facilities

COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding organisation for research innovation networks. One of the objectives COSTAction called “Mobilising Data, Policies Experts Scientific Collections“ (MOBILISE) to work on documents expert training with broad involvement professionals from participating European countries. The guideline presented here its general concept will address principles, strategies standards long term preservation archiving data constructs (data packages, products) as addressed by under control scientific collections community. document being developed part MOBILISE Action targeted towards primarily staff at natural collection facilities, well management bodies like museums, herbaria information technology personnel less familiar principles routines. challenges big storage (distributed, cloud-based) solutions that mirroring, backing up, synchronisation publication productive environments are documents, guidelines online platforms, e.g., DISSCo knowledge base (see Hardisty et al. (2020)) concepts Open Cloud (EOSC). Archival processes resulting constructs, however, often left outside considerations. This large gap because archival issues not only simple technical ones “bit preservation” but also envisage number logical, functional, normative, administrative semantic “functional long-term archiving”. main target digital object types this Guideline Digital or Extended Specimens products persistent identifier assignment lying authority facilities. Such objects specified according Object Architecture (DOA , see Wittenburg 2018) similar abstract models introduced Harjes (2020) Lannom (2020). collection-specific defined following evolving context Consortium Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), infrastructure DiSSCo (Distributed System Collections), Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG). described OAIS (Open System) reference model. archived should be reusable sense FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) guiding principles. Organisations national (digital) archives, computing professional (domain-specific) centers libraries might offer specific services act partner organisations consists key messages have been defined. They community, especially leadership taxonomic Aspects several groups stakeholders discussed cost models. does recommend software workflows. Supplementary delivered via wiki-based platform Archiving Working Group WG4.