CODATA is proud to participate in a new EU-funded research project, Enhancing Digital Preservation Strategies at European and National Level (EOSC EDEN).
EOSC EDEN and FIDELIS projects at the joint kick-off meeting, Helsinki, 4 Feb 2025. Photo credit: Andrea Greco, Trust-IT Services.
Two new EU-funded projects, EOSC EDEN and FIDELIS, started on 1 January 2025 and bring over 30 European and international organisations together to advance digital preservation and curation in Europe. The projects will contribute to the EOSC endeavour by advancing and harmonising digital preservation and data curation practices and services in Europe, upskilling the key actors in the area and consolidating the position of FAIR-enabling trustworthy digital repositories in Europe.
The EOSC EDEN project (grant agreement no.101188015) will create a framework to identify which data are candidates for digital preservation based on the assessment of the usage of data and its quality and benefits to science and society. It will also develop a model for re-appraisal of data and test its usability with relevant communities and develop tools and services to automate certain preservation actions. EOSC EDEN training and outreach activities aim at engaging relevant communities in testing and validating the project outcomes and raising awareness for the benefits of digital preservation and temporal aspects of FAIR data.
CODATA’s main contribution will be to WP1, ‘Data and process framework for long-term digital preservation’. This work package will survey the current landscape of digital preservation practice in data holding institutions; define requirements for reuse fitness of information objects; and develop a re-appraisal model which will be tested for usability. WP outputs will be picked up by other work packages and communicated publicly.
Task 1.1 led by CODATA will perform a landscape analysis of existing frameworks, guidelines and practices for identification, selection, and appraisal of data for long-term digital preservation.
Anu Märkälä, EOSC EDEN Coordinator and Project Manager, CSC, said, “EOSC EDEN has the opportunity to become the reference point in Europe for digital preservation and curation practices. Different communities and scientific disciplines tend to have their own data quality standards, curation procedures and digital preservation methodologies. Our mission is to understand the current landscape, identify common standards and practices, and provide solutions and new approaches that help institutions in selecting and preserving high-quality FAIR research outputs. All this will also help to reduce the costs of preservation and increase the future re-usability of data.”
Dr Laura Molloy, research lead at CODATA, said, “I am delighted that CODATA is engaging with the digital preservation world in this new EU-funded project. One of our priorities is to make data work for cross-domain grand challenges, and sustainable preservation of research data is a fundamental aspect of making data more FAIR, which is necessary to tackle cross-domain scientific problems. There is a huge amount of expertise in the digital preservation sector that is highly relevant to the challenges that the EOSC is currently considering, and I see the success of the funding bid for this work as a really encouraging sign that the EU is taking that expertise seriously.”
The EOSC EDEN consortium is composed of 16 organisations that have expertise in digital preservation, data quality, curation and FAIR data management and services. The consortium also includes representatives from seven scientific disciplines: Climate Simulations; Earth and Environmental Sciences; Food Sciences; High-Energy Physics; Life Sciences and Bioinformatics; Linguistics; and Social Sciences, as well as partners representing some of the most prominent global networks active in digital preservation.
Both EDEN and FIDELIS projects are coordinated by CSC – IT Center for Science and both projects will run from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2027.
Read more about EOSC EDEN
- EU CORDIS project listing: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101188015
- Social media:
- LinkedIn: Join the EOSC EDEN public group
- Bluesky: @eosc-eden.bsky.social
What is EOSC?
The EOSC is a European joint endeavour to create a web of FAIR data and services for science in Europe. It will offer a federated virtual environment where researchers can find, share, process, analyse and reuse FAIR research outputs across borders and scientific disciplines. The EOSC is considered as a key enabler for Open Science. It is also part of the European strategy for data and one of the Common European Data Spaces that are intended to unleash the potential of data-driven innovation and make more data available in different thematic fields.