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The long-term preservation of digital research data is a key component in moving towards a sustainable data culture in Earth System Sciences (ESS) and science in general. Digital long-term preservation entails the ability to preserve data in a way that ensures its authenticity, integrity, access, and interpretability throughout technological and cultural change for as long as the data is required, potentially indefinitely. This requires designated curation institutions, in the case of research data these are normally subject-specific repositories, willing and capable to take over the responsibility for the data in the long term and to conduct preservation actions over time. This document provides guidance and support for repository providers aiming to implement or improve on existing long-term preservation approaches for digital research data. On the one hand, these guidelines illustrate and raise awareness for the challenges of digital long-term preservation and solution approaches, existing conceptual standards and principles in this area as well as frameworks for trustworthy digital repositories. On the other hand, they offer abstract guidance for the decision-making process connected with the implementation of long-term preservation policies and strategies on an institutional level as well as workflows for the active preservation in repositories. The document is intended as an entry point to these topics, offering references to more detailed and in-depth resources on specific aspects of digital long-term preservation. The primary target group of this document are stakeholders within repositories, e.g., decision-makers, repository managers, or expert staff, regardless of the repository's size or its current stage of digital preservation maturity. These guidelines are designed to support both established as well as smaller and emerging repository providers in developing and implementing pragmatic preservation strategies. Given that repositories are part of a wider ecosystem of digital research infrastructures and often dependent on external funding, this document might be also relevant for policy-makers and funders, engaged in shaping the overall landscape of digital infrastructures and data culture in science.