Within the framework of the ARCHIVER pre-commercial procurement tender, between December 2020 and August 2021 three consortia competed to deliver innovative, prototype solutions for Long-term data preservation. Two of them have been selected to continue with the pilot phase and deliver research ready solutions for long-term data preservation of research data, therefore supplementing a lack in the current European Open Science panorama. They have been announced at a Public Ceremony on the 29th of November 2021, virtually hosted by DESY.
Digital preservation has emerged in recent years as a fast-moving and growing community of practice that is of ubiquitous relevance, but in which capability is unevenly distributed.
The importance of advanced long-term preservation to allow reproducibility of research results is emphasised by the EOSC Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) and different reports of relevant bodies such as the Digital Preservation Coalition.
ARCHIVER is providing a substantial contribution to this vision. Started in January 2019, ARCHIVER is a unique initiative currently running in the EOSC framework that is competitively procuring R&D services for archiving and digital preservation. The ARCHIVER tenderers were selected through an open and competitive procurement process. Between December 2020 and August 2021 three consortia worked on innovative, prototype solutions for Long-term data preservation, in close collaboration with CERN, EMBL-EBI, DESY and PIC. Many Research institutes - such as the European Institute of Oncology (IEO), ARDC, the Stockholm University Library, JISC, SurfSara and others - have already expressed their interest in the ARCHIVER solutions by joining the group of Early Adopters, which will be part of the EOSC Marketplace.
The group of buyers includes Inter-governmental and national research organisations with extreme data management needs and extensive experience: CERN, DESY, EMBL-EBI and IFAE. ADDESTINO and Trust-IT Services complement the consortium bringing expertise in the requirement assessment and promotion activities.