Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC)

Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC)
Name	Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC)
Established	2007
Jurisdiction	International
Discipline	Digital preservation, archival science, information management

Contents

Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC) is an audit and certification checklist designed to assess the trustworthiness of digital repositories and institutional archives. Developed to provide objective criteria for repositories holding digital content, TRAC has influenced policy, standards, and certification schemes across libraries, archives, and scholarly infrastructure. It informed international practices among organizations such as the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, Digital Preservation Coalition, International Council on Archives, Research Libraries UK, and Council on Library and Information Resources.

Overview

TRAC provides a structured set of criteria covering organizational infrastructure, digital object management, and technical security to evaluate repositories such as PubMed Central, Europeana, arXiv, Zenodo, and institutional repositories at universities like Harvard University, University of Oxford, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of California, Berkeley. The checklist addresses governance exemplars like UNESCO recommendations, stewardship models used by Johns Hopkins University, and practices reflected in initiatives such as HathiTrust and Internet Archive. TRAC influenced certification efforts at bodies including National Information Standards Organization and International Organization for Standardization.

TRAC emerged from collaborative efforts among stakeholders including Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, Council on Library and Information Resources, Library of Congress, and representatives from institutions such as British Library, National Library of Australia, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cornell University Library, and Yale University. Early development drew on archival principles from Society of American Archivists and digital preservation research by Open Planets Foundation and Digital Curation Centre. The checklist consolidated prior work by projects like MetaArchive Cooperative and Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies while aligning with standards such as OAIS (ISO 14721), ISO 16363, and guidance from Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

TRAC’s criteria map to elements recognized by ISO/IEC, ISO 16363, and the Open Archival Information System reference model articulated by Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems. Categories include organizational viability, digital object management, technological infrastructure, and security controls similar to those addressed by NIST, CIS, and ENISA. TRAC’s benchmarks reference practices seen at repositories such as LOCKSS, DuraSpace, Preservica, Figshare, and Dryad Digital Repository and align with metadata standards used by Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, PREMIS, METS, and MODS.

The TRAC process involves self-assessment, documentation, and peer review by auditors trained in frameworks used by International Council on Archives, Society of American Archivists, and certification bodies such as Data Seal of Approval and World Data System. Steps mirror accreditation pathways used by National Archives of the United Kingdom, Swiss Federal Archives, and German National Library, including evidence submission, on-site review, and periodic reassessment similar to protocols of ISO certification programs. Repositories such as Cambridge University Library and consortia like CLOCKSS have used TRAC-based procedures to demonstrate compliance with preservation commitments to partners such as Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, and research funders like Wellcome Trust and National Institutes of Health.

Adoption of TRAC influenced policy decisions at institutions including Library and Archives Canada, National Diet Library, Princeton University Library, and University of Toronto Libraries, and underpinned requirements from funders like European Commission, National Science Foundation, and Research Councils UK. TRAC-style certification strengthened trust relationships among stakeholders including ORCID, Crossref, DataCite, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, and scholarly societies such as American Historical Association and Modern Language Association. Its impact is visible in vendor practices at companies such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and preservation service providers like Amazon Glacier-style offerings and dedicated archives run by British Library and Bibliothèque nationale de France.

TRAC’s methodology has been incorporated into standards and schemes including ISO 16363, CoreTrustSeal, Data Seal of Approval, ISO 14721 (OAIS), and community frameworks used by European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN Open Data Portal, Human Brain Project, ELIXIR, and domain repositories like PANGAEA and GenBank. National programs such as those at National Library of Finland, Royal Danish Library, and National Library of Sweden reference TRAC principles, as do collaborative infrastructures like EUDAT and European Open Science Cloud.

Critics from communities including Open Knowledge Foundation, SPARC, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and researchers at National Institute of Standards and Technology have argued that TRAC can be resource-intensive for smaller institutions such as community archives and independent libraries, mirroring concerns raised with ISO-style certification and accreditation programs used by UNESCO and Council of Europe-linked cultural heritage institutions. Other limitations cited by commentators associated with Digital Preservation Coalition and Research Data Alliance include potential rigidity compared with agile models employed by GitHub, Apache Software Foundation, Creative Commons, and the Wikimedia Foundation.