The Language Bank of Finland awarded the Data Seal of Approval
The Language Bank of Finland, a Finnish language research service center hosted by CSC – IT Center for Science and coordinated by the national FIN-CLARIN consortium, has received the Data Seal of Approval certificate (DSA) as of May 1, 2015. The certificate denotes a trusted research data repository with sustainable and open policies.
The basic principle of DSA is that data created and used by scientists should be managed, curated and archived in order to preserve the initial investment in collecting them. Researchers must be certain that the data provided by the archives remain useful and meaningful, even in the long term. The concept of sustainability involves challenging aspects in many areas: organizational, technical, financial, legal, etc. Certification can be an important contribution to ensuring the reliability and durability of digital archives and hence the possibilities for sharing data over a long term.
"The certification is a part of the Language Bank of Finland's progress towards consolidating its position as an internationally recognized language research infrastructure center but also a step in the continuum of providing better services for domestic customers. The bulk of the processes and policies implemented during the process had already been tried and tested in everyday use during the center's over 15 years of history", says Mr. Tero Aalto, one of the Language Bank's administrators, who CSC has appointed as a representative in DSA General Assembly.
The Language Bank of Finland is a language research service at CSC – IT Center for Science. CSC is a non-profit, state-owned company administered by the Ministry of Education and Culture. CSC maintains and develops the state-owned centralized IT infrastructure and uses it to provide nationwide IT services for research, libraries, archives, museums and culture as well as information, education and research management. CSC is responsible for the Language Bank's infrastructure, maintenance and security.
In developing the Language Bank, CSC collaborates with the national FIN-CLARIN consortium. The other members of the consortium are University of Helsinki, Institute for the Languages of Finland, University of Eastern Finland, University of Oulu, University of Tampere, University of Jyväskylä, University of Turku, Aalto University, University of Vaasa, and Åbo Akademi University. FIN-CLARIN collaborates with and aims to become a member of the Europe-wide CLARIN ERIC consortium.
"With Data Seal of Approval an institution keeping research data can show that it has adapted good international practices, and additionally DSA also supports operational information security", said Mr. Urpo Kaila, Head of Security at CSC.
Additional Information
Tero Aalto
Application Specialist
CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.
tero.aalto@csc.fi
phone: +358 50 3819 032
Implementation of the Data Seal of Approval in the Language Bank of Finland: https://assessment.datasealofapproval.org/assessment_155/seal/html