Following the release of the full reprocessing (v2.0) of the sea level ECV, the description of the validation of this dataset is now available in the following publication:

Legeais, J.-F., Ablain, M., Zawadzki, L., Zuo, H., Johannessen, J. A., Scharffenberg, M. G., Fenoglio-Marc, L., Fernandes, M. J., Andersen, O. B., Rudenko, S., Cipollini, P., Quartly, G. D., Passaro, M., Cazenave, A., and Benveniste, J.: An improved and homogeneous altimeter sea level record from the ESA Climate Change Initiative, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 10, 281-301, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-281-2018, 2018.

Note that the description of how this product has been built is already available in the following publication:

Quartly, G. D., Legeais, J.-F., Ablain, M., Zawadzki, L., Fernandes, M. J., Rudenko, S., Carrère, L., García, P. N., Cipollini, P., Andersen, O. B., Poisson, J.-C., Mbajon Njiche, S., Cazenave, A., and Benveniste, J.: A new phase in the production of quality-controlled sea level data, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 9, 557-572, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-9-557-2017, 2017.

See the "Products" webpage for additional information and access to the products.