Fiocruz's Arca Dados receives unprecedented international certification in Brazil

The Arca Dados, Fiocruz's official research data repository, received the CoreTrustSeal on Thursday (9/12), a seal from the non-profit organization CoreTrust which provides one of the most important international certifications legitimizing the platform as a reliable source. This is the first time that a Brazilian data repository has received the certification. The evaluators, who are part of an international data community, considered criteria such as storage processes, legal, ethical and technological issues, quality of processes, investments by the institution, among others.

Arca Dados has the mission of being the platform for archiving, publishing, disseminating, preserving and sharing digital data for research produced by the Fiocruz community and/or in partnership with other research institutes or bodies. The CoreTrust seal is the first step towards other certifications such as ISO (International Organization for Standardization). Since 2020, Fiocruz has had a policy of managing, sharing and opening up data for research, and Arca Dados is the main tool of this policy.

“The recognition of quality and reliability is the result of a great institutional effort towards a more open science, sharing of knowledge, information and data, preservation and memory in the area of research,” explains the coordinator of the Arca Dados Management Committee and of the Coordination and Information of the Vice-Presidency of Education, Information and Communication (Vpeic/Fiocruz), Vanessa Jorge.