SSHOC thematic cluster project (2019-2022) has built a strong and recognisable brand around a consortium of 5 ERICs and ESFRI Landmarks, 1 ESFRI project and onboarded Social Science and Humanities (SSH) data communities, 5 of them obtaining the status of ESFRI projects in the latest editions of ESFRI Roadmaps thus actively breaking down the silos through the sharing of knowledge, tools, and services with significant potential for further capacity-building as an important building block for EOSC.

Background: The General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (hereinafter GDPR) has given EU/EEA countries an opportunity to harmonise their legal framework for data protection, and to improve the conditions for processing personal data in research and data sharing. Although this was one of the rationales behind the GDPR, it has not necessarily been achieved [1-3].

Background: The main purpose of SSHOC is to create the social sciences and humanities area of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), thereby facilitating access to flexible, scalable research data and related services streamlined to the precise needs of the Social Science and Humanities (hereinafter SSH) community [1, 2]. The ambition of EOSC is to develop a ‘web of FAIR data and services’ for science in Europe, by building on existing research infrastructure and services supported by the EC, Member States and research communities.

Research data should be managed, curated, stored and shared in a way that lives up to the expectations regarding trustworthiness and quality, provides sustainability and preserves the investments. The Trustworthy Digital Repository standards which have emerged from the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model offer a certification solution for repositories. CoreTrustSeal (CTS) offers baseline certification and supports the concept of outsourcing.

This deliverable D8.1 addresses (i) the organisational structure needed to safeguard the availability, quality and maintenance of the results after the SSHOC project, (ii) the conditions for financial sustainability of the exploitable results and (iii) the actions needed to implement and sustain the envisaged organisational structure for the post-project collaboration and sustainability.

The distributed character of the data infrastructures in use by members of the SSHOC community means that an approach to assessing their trustworthiness and the quality of their data repositories needs to be developed.