National Catalogue of Repositories

Abstract

National Catalogue of Repositories (NKR) is a cross-disciplinary tool providing a sustainable framework for the registration, discovery, and long-term management of structured, machine-readable information about data repositories in the Czech Republic. By documenting repositories’ FAIR implementation plans, metadata schemas and application profiles, and controlled vocabularies, the NKR improves metadata quality, facilitates reuse, and enables interoperability across domains. The NKR is built on Cordra, open-source software for managing digital objects, each identified by a persistent Handle identifier. Cordra is also the backbone of the EOSC Data Type Registry developed in the FAIR4EOSC project, ensuring tight alignment with EOSC Core Components. Moreover, metadata schemas and application profiles from NKR will be programmatically registered in the Metadata Schema and Crosswalk Registry developed by FAIRCORE4EOSC, enabling consistent discovery and reuse across the EOSC Federation. Currently in a pilot phase, NKR will empower Czech research communities to share and align practices, while also feeding into the EOSC EU Node to support cross-disciplinary discovery at the European scale. By making information on repositories, schemas, and vocabularies openly available and reusable, NKR demonstrates how national efforts can be integrated into the EOSC Federation, with further development planned to extend coverage and functionality.