Archiving and preservation

How the published record stays available if a journal or this publisher stops.

Open access is only meaningful if the article is still there in twenty years. This page sets out how the record is kept.

Digital preservation

[Update: this section makes a verifiable claim that DOAJ and other indexing bodies check directly. State only the services each journal is actually enrolled in, and remove the rest. The usual options for an OJS publisher are the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN), which is free and built into OJS; LOCKSS and CLOCKSS; Portico; and deposit in a national library. Enrol before you make the claim.]

Our intention across the portfolio is that every journal participates in a recognised dark archive, so that if a journal ceases to publish or this publisher ceases to operate, the content is released and remains permanently accessible.

Persistent identifiers

Every article is registered with Crossref and assigned a DOI. The DOI is the permanent link to the article and continues to resolve if a journal’s web address changes. Metadata deposited with Crossref includes the title, authors, ORCIDs where supplied, affiliations, abstract, references, funding and licence.

Self-archiving

Because articles are CC BY and authors retain copyright, authors may deposit the published version in any institutional or subject repository immediately, with no embargo. Repository copies are a genuine part of the preservation picture, and we encourage deposit. See [open access and licensing](/open-access-and-licensing).

Backups and hosting

Journal platforms are hosted on managed infrastructure with scheduled backups of both the database and the uploaded files, held separately from the live server and tested by restoration. Backups protect against operational failure; they are not a substitute for a dark archive, and we do not present them as one.

If a journal ceases publication

If a title stops publishing, the archive remains online and the DOIs continue to resolve. If it cannot be kept online, the content is released from the preservation network and the position is announced on this site, with the location of the archived content.

Corrections to the record

Preservation covers the version of record including any correction, expression of concern or retraction notice attached to it. See [corrections, retractions and expressions of concern](/corrections-and-retractions).