This deliverable recalls, deepens, and expands on the set of guidelines that falls under the name "JERICO Label", introduced in the JERICO community since the JERICO-FP7 project and consolidated during the JERICO-NEXT project through the Deliverable D2.7 "JERICO Label" (Nair et al., 2019). The JERICO Label was created mainly as a set of technical recommendations to ensure a certain level of harmonisation of technologies, methodologies and procedures, and a demonstrable quality of data, within the emerging transnational network of coastal observatories. The JERICO Label evolved then through successive JERICO projects, as the idea of establishing a European Research Infrastructure became more and more concrete, and incorporated new and more mature concepts and tools for the practical implementation of its objectives. The current deliverable represents the outputs of tasks 5.4 ("Development of the JERICO label Committee to sustain the scientific research excellence framework of JERICO-RI") and 5.5 ("Policy for sustaining excellence and performance") of the JERICO-DS project, and is intended as an updated version of the JERICO Label. Provided that the previous version of the Label remains valid for everything that is not updated here, new sections are described as follows.

Section 2 is dedicated to the definition of the composition, role and mission of the JERICO Label Committee (JLC). JLC is an advisory panel, it represents the JERICO RI partners but it is also open to external members, and its overall objective, inspired by the JERICO Label itself, is "to support JERICO-RI's framework of scientific research excellence, to ensure that JERICO-RI keeps pace with scientific and technological development and attracts the best research teams". Section 3 addresses the need of identifying a formal pathway for endorsement of best practices developed in JERICO-RI. Within the JERICO network, a remarkable number of documents has been delivered containing technical and scientific recommendations, often referred as good/best practices, for sensor and platform operations, data management and data analysis. However, with respect to each one of these documents, the degree of consensus within the scientific community at a wider level, is not always clear. The definition and adoption of an independent and standardised procedure for peer reviewing JERICO Best Practices becomes mandatory for supporting the trust in JERICO’s leadership in coastal ocean observation.

Section 3 also summarises JERICO-S3 guidelines for the development of documented practices toward best practices through the compliance with a set of criteria proposed as the foundation of a "maturity model for methods and their applications" in the context of ocean observation.

Section 4 summarises last developed and agreed policies for accessing both physical and virtual (namely JERICO-CORE) JERICO infrastructures, with attention paid also for securing JERICO-CORE data, information, and services against any loss of conformity, integrity, and availability due to incidents, human errors, or malicious attacks.

Section 5 provides a report on the work done for identifying, evaluating and synthesising the Core Impact Indicators and key performance indicators from the ESFRI Sustainability WG (Kolar, 2019) and OECD (2019) recommendations that the JERICO-DS design will incorporate into its different life cycle phases, enabling effective performance monitoring as the RI develops. This will feed the roadmap for an operational RI.

Section 6 outlines the Terms of Reference for the Equal Opportunity, Gender Balance, Ethical Issues, and Minimization of Carbon Footprint Policy of JERICO-RI.

In the final section 7 conclusions and suggestions for next steps are provided.