Digital Preservation Coalition Research Articles

Our Heritage, Our Stories: developing AI tools to link and support community-generated digital cultural heritage

PurposeCommunity-generated digital content (CGDC) is one of the UK’s prime cultural assets. However, CGDC is currently “critically endangered” (Digital Preservation Coalition, 2021) due to technological and organisational barriers and has proven resistant to traditional methods of linking and integration. The challenge of integrating CGDC into larger archives has effectively silenced diverse community voices within our national collection. Our Heritage, Our Stories (OHOS), funded by the UK’s AHRC programme Towards a National Collection, responds to these urgent challenges by bringing together cutting-edge approaches from cultural heritage, humanities and computer science.Design/methodology/approachExisting solutions to CGDC integration, involving bespoke interventionist activities, are expensive, time-consuming and unsustainable at scale, while unsophisticated computational integration erases the meaning and purpose of both CGDC and its creators. Using innovative multidisciplinary methods, AI tools and a co-design process, previously unfindable and unlinkable CGDC will be made discoverable in our virtual national collection.FindingsThere currently exists a range of disconnected, fragile and under-represented community-generated heritage which is at increasing risk of loss. Therefore, OHOS will work to ensure the survival and preservation of these nationally important resources, for the future and for our shared national collection.Originality/valueAs we dissolve barriers to create meaningful new links across CGDC collections and develop new methods of engagement, OHOS will also make this content accessible to new and diverse audiences. This will facilitate a wealth of fresh research while also embedding new strategies for future management of CGDC into heritage practice and training and fostering newly enriching, robust connections between communities and archival institutions.

Digital Scholarly Journals Are Poorly Preserved: A Study of 7 Million Articles

Introduction: Digital preservation underpins the persistence of scholarly links and citations through the digital object identifier (DOI) system. We do not currently know, at scale, the extent to which articles assigned a DOI are adequately preserved. Methods: We construct a database of preservation information from original archival sources and then examine the preservation statuses of 7,438,037 DOIs in a random sample. Results: Of the 7,438,037 works examined, there were 5.9 million copies spread over the archives used in this work. Furthermore, a total of 4,342,368 of the works that we studied (58.38%) were present in at least one archive. However, this left 2,056,492 works in our sample (27.64%) that are seemingly unpreserved. The remaining 13.98% of works in the sample were excluded either for being too recent (published in the current year), not being journal articles, or having insufficient date metadata for us to identify the source. Discussion: Our study is limited by design in several ways. Among these are the facts that it uses only a subset of archives, it only tracks articles with DOIs, and it does not account for institutional repository coverage. Nonetheless, as an initial attempt to gauge the landscape, our results will still be of interest to libraries, publishers, and researchers. Conclusion: This work reveals an alarming preservation deficit. Only 0.96% of Crossref members (n = 204) can be confirmed to digitally preserve over 75% of their content in three or more of the archives that we studied. (Note that when, in this article, we write “preserved,” we mean “that we were able to confirm as preserved,” as per the specified limitations of this study.) A slightly larger proportion, i.e., 8.5% (n = 1,797), preserved over 50% of their content in two or more archives. However, many members, i.e., 57.7% (n = 12,257), only met the threshold of having 25% of their material in a single archive. Most worryingly, 32.9% (n = 6,982) of Crossref members seem not to have any adequate digital preservation in place, which is against the recommendations of the Digital Preservation Coalition.

The Impact of the SEADDA COST Action

The Saving Archaeology from the Digital Dark Age (SEADDA) COST Action ran from 2019 to 2023 and produced a wide range of publications, opportunities for capacity building and knowledge transfer. This paper will discuss the less tangible forms of impact resulting from the work of the SEADDA members working within and across their own networks. These impacts include the new avenues of communication and collaboration created through the data stewardship and management focussed National Workshops held in Norway, Serbia, Portugal, Turkey, France, Romania and Ireland. Each workshop took a different form to be suit the needs of their community, but all resulted in progress towards ensuring the long- term persistence of digital archaeological data. This paper will describe the impact of each of these National Workshops. SEADDA made and strengthened connections across a range of different areas of collaboration, primarily through work with members of the European Archaeological Council, the Digital Preservation Coalition, and the ARIADNE Infrastructure for archaeological data. Each of these connections has resulted in closer ties, ongoing collaboration and other forms of impact that would not have been possible without SEADDA. SEADDA was also committed to ensuring participation of non-EU countries which participate in the COST, and supporting doctoral students and early career researchers, and the impacts of these commitments will also be highlighted in this paper.

Format Agnostic Archival Processing: Using One Standard for All

Pooling guidance and examples from nationally and internationally known groups including the Digital Preservation Coalition, University of California Libraries, and OCLC, this article supports processing archival assets with a format agnostic perspective to promote a unified standard for all materials. Format agnostic processing can embrace and align digital and physical assets under one expectation for basic outputs regardless of their formats. In mixed material collections, digital assets are frequently seen as requiring a disassociated set of tools and knowledge and approached as unconnected to the physical assets. The format agnostic perspective can eliminate the tendency toward varying levels of processing and differing descriptions standards complicating the discovery of collection materials due to the varying formats of its assets. It can also support timely processing and preservation of digital assets to decrease the risk of data loss. Format agnostic processing would enhance discoverability while minimizing the loss of digital information.

Digital Preservation and Digital Records and Archives Management in Indonesia: Contextualization-Synthesis of Two Models Digital Preservation

The digital acceleration in Indonesia started in 2018 and affected a fundamental transformation in the government institutions' digital information management system. However, due to the country's high rate of digital divide, it faces a risk of being trapped in digital darkness. Therefore, Indonesia requires a digital preservation model that fits these circumstances. Under such circumstances, Indonesia needs a digital preservation guideline that can be used by low-resource and also high-resource organizations to minimize the risk of digital darkness. The research aims to describe a digital preservation schema which contextual to digital records and archives management in Indonesia. It was conducted from January to December 2021. This research used qualitative methods. This study discovered that contextualizing and synthesizing the Digital Preservation Coalition Rapid Assessment Model 2.0 (DPC RAM 2.0) with Level of Digital Preservation (LDP) can result in a digital preservation scheme that is contextual with digital records and archives management in Indonesia.

FAIR Forever? Accountabilities and Responsibilities in the Preservation of Research Data

Digital preservation is a fast-moving and growing community of practice of ubiquitous relevance, but in which capability is unevenly distributed. Within the open science and research data communities, digital preservation has a close alignment to the FAIR principles and is delivered through a complex specialist infrastructure comprising technology, staff and policy. However, capacity erodes quickly, establishing a need for ongoing examination and review to ensure that skills, technology, and policy remain fit for changing purpose. To address this challenge, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) conducted the FAIR Forever study, commissioned by the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Sustainability Working Group and funded by the EOSC Secretariat Project in 2020, to assess the current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the preservation of research data across EOSC, and the feasibility of establishing shared approaches, workflows and services that would benefit EOSC stakeholders.
 This paper draws from the FAIR Forever study to document and explore its key findings on the identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the preservation of FAIR data in EOSC, and to the preservation of research data more broadly. It begins with background of the study and an overview of the methodology employed, which involved a desk-based assessment of the emerging EOSC vision, interviews with representatives of EOSC stakeholders, and focus groups with digital preservation specialists and data managers in research organizations. It summarizes key findings on the need for clarity on digital preservation in the EOSC vision and for elucidation of roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities to mitigate risks of data loss, reputation, and sustainability. It then outlines the recommendations provided in the final report presented to the EOSC Sustainability Working Group.
 To better ensure that research data can be FAIRer for longer, the recommendations of the study are presented with discussion on how they can be extended and applied to various research data stakeholders in and outside of EOSC, and suggest ways to bring together research data curation, management, and preservation communities to better ensure FAIRness now and in the long term.

The ScholarLed Consortium

ScholarLed, a consortium of five not-for-profit, scholar-led OA book publishers, was founded in 2018 in order to develop powerful, practical ways for small-scale, scholar-led Open Access presses to grow and flourish in a publishing landscape that is changing rapidly. We comprise Mattering Press, meson press, Open Book Publishers, Open Humanities Press, and punctum books: five publishers with different business models and publishing practices, but with a shared commitment to making high-quality research available OA without levying Book Processing Charges (BPCs).
 We have approached this task with the philosophy of ‘scaling small’; in other words, rather than seeking to grow our reach by any one of us becoming exponentially larger, we want to create systems that allow a large number of diverse, small-scale scholarly publishing initiatives to operate collaboratively, and so to foster a robust, inclusive and community-managed publishing ecosystem in partnership with all actors in the scholarly publishing ecosystem (including scholars, libraries, and funders). Collectively the ScholarLed presses have now published over 500 books, and expect to publish over 80 new titles in the coming year. What would the publishing landscape look like if, rather than 5 presses, we were 25, 50, or 100 in number?
 Accordingly, in our first year we became key partners in the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project, which we developed along with organisations including Coventry University; Loughborough University Library; University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) Library; Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB); Jisc Collections; and the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC). In June of this year, this project successfully secured funding of £2.2 million from Research England to build the necessary open infrastructure over the next three years to transform open access book publishing, by moving away from a model of competing commercial service operations to a more horizontal and cooperative, knowledge-sharing approach.
 In this presentation, we will discuss the ‘scaling small’ philosophy that underlies ScholarLed, and how this chimes with growing international movements such as the Invest in Open Infrastructure initiative. We will also explore how this impacts the COPIM project and our firm conviction that, in order for open access publishing initiatives to thrive, we have to develop more robust definitions of ‘open’ that go beyond releasing content from behind paywalls. COPIM will pilot a range of interventions, from developing open, transparent, sustainable, and community-governed infrastructures for the curation, dissemination, discovery, and long-term preservation of open content and open data, to helping publishers transition away from a BPC-based business model, to following the best practices for integrating open content into institutional library, digital learning, and repository systems. COPIM prepares the ground for OA publishing to thrive, increasing its strength and heterogeneity within a robust, inclusive and community-managed publishing ecosystem: Scaling Small.
 Keywords: scholar-led; community-driven; open access publishing.

Digitally Endangered Species: The BitList

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is a not-for-profit professional membership organisation that enables its members to deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services, helping them to derive enduring value from digital assets and raising awareness of the strategic, cultural and technological challenges they face. The Coalition achieve its aims through advocacy, community engagement, workforce development, capacity-building, good practice and good governance.On 30 November 2017, as part of its ongoing advocacy work and the first International Digital Preservation Day, the DPC published the first ‘BitList.’ This list presented the results of a crowd-sourcing exercise that sought to discover which digital materials the digital preservation community thinks are most at risk, as well as which materials are relatively safe thanks to digital preservation.

Current status of scientific data curation research and practices in mainland China

INTRODUCTIONWith rapid growth in activities and resulting body of scientific data, have become as important a strategic resource as natural resources and human resources. Scientific depends more and more on finding theories and knowledge from scientific data, and thus data-intensive scientific discovery has become fourth paradigm of scientific research. Therefore, it is urgent to develop and adopt methods to support collection, collation, preservation and utilization of scientific data, which are referred to as scientific curation.The term was first coined by Zorich (1995) in his paper on museum future collection management, to refer to maintenance and of museum objects and specimen information. At Digital Curation: Digital Archives, Libraries and e-Science Seminar, sponsored by Digital Preservation Coalition and British National Space Centre and held in London in 2001, term and with their modern meanings were proposed in context of e-Science which requires management, preservation, and sharing of a wide range of scientific (Beagrie & Pothen, 2001). However, specific definitions of these two terms were not mentioned at time.In 2002, Gray, Szalay, Thakar, Stoughton and Vandenberg (2002) mentioned term in their technical report about scientific publication and preservation. However, they also did not give a clear definition and only listed some related activities, such as recording gathering process, archiving all versions of programs and event logs, and keeping notes, memoranda and experimental data.In 2003, U K. Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) gave a clear definition to term for first time in its e-Science report: the activity of, managing and promoting use of from its point of creation, to ensure it is fit for contemporary purpose, and available for discovery and reuse (Lord & Macdonald, 2003). Here, refer to digital primary generated in academic and scientific research (Lord & Macdonald, 2003).After examining various definitions of from 2003 to 2007, Yakel (2007) concluded that digital has increasingly become an umbrella concept that includes preservation, curation, electronic records management, and asset management. However, he did not give clear definitions to these two terms.The Digital Curation Center (DCC), a U.K.-based center with a focus on building capacity, capability and skills for management, gives a formal definition to digital curation as maintaining, preserving and adding value to throughout its lifecycle (Digital Curation Centre, 2004). It also made a subtle distinction between data curation and digital curation as follows: both of them refer to looking after and adding value to data, and moreover latter also implies creating some new from existing to ensure its current and future usefulness (Digital Curation Centre, 2008). In 2011, Walters and Skinner (2011) distinguished between these two terms according to their application scope and deemed that is applied most often in science, engineering and social science fields whereas is used more frequently to describe humanities and arts environment.In China, some researchers also had discussions about intension and extension of these two terms. It has been generally recognized that is often used in U K. whereas is often used in USA (Wang, 2014; Xia, 2013; Yang, 2016). Data is also often used in natural science disciplines whereas is often used in libraries, archives and other social science disciplines (Wang & Shen, 2014). No matter how these two terms are defined, they do not have essential differences and can be used interchangeably in most cases. …

Making Our Digital Memory Accessible Tomorrow by Watching Technology Today

Since its foundation in 2002, the Digital Preservation Coalition has published a series of topical Technology Watch Reports that provide an authoritative introduction to recognized challenges associated with maintaining access to data and digital materials in the long term. The series fills a strategic gap between emerging research and actual professional practice, and it strongly reflects the needs of the DPC's members. Commissioned from recognized domain experts, they identify and track developments in IT, as well as the standards and tools that inhibit or enable digital preservation. The reports are thoroughly peer-reviewed and scrutinized by the DPC membership prior to publication to ensure they are informed, current, concise, and balanced. They are available to all and are intended as a lasting and helpful contribution to knowledge exchange.

Making Sense: Talking Data Management with Researchers

Incremental is one of eight projects in the JISC Managing Research Data programme funded to identify institutional requirements for digital research data management and pilot relevant infrastructure. Our findings concur with those of other Managing Research Data projects, as well as with several previous studies. We found that many researchers: (i) organise their data in an ad hoc fashion, posing difficulties with retrieval and re-use; (ii) store their data on all kinds of media without always considering security and back-up; (iii) are positive about data sharing in principle though reluctant in practice; (iv) believe back-up is equivalent to preservation. The key difference between our approach and that of other Managing Research Data projects is the type of infrastructure we are piloting. While the majority of these projects focus on developing technical solutions, we are focusing on the need for ‘soft’ infrastructure, such as one-to-one tailored support, training, and easy-to-find, concise guidance that breaks down some of the barriers information professionals have unintentionally built with their use of specialist terminology.We are employing a bottom-up approach as we feel that to support the step-by-step development of sound research data management practices, you must first understand researchers’ needs and perspectives. Over the life of the project, Incremental staff will act as mediators, assisting researchers and local support staff to understand the data management requirements within which they are expect to work, and will determine how these can be addressed within research workflows and the existing technical infrastructure.Our primary goal is to build data management capacity within the Universities of Cambridge and Glasgow by raising awareness of basic principles so everyone can manage their data to a certain extent. We will ensure our lessons can be picked up and used by other institutions. Our affiliation with the Digital Curation Centre and Digital Preservation Coalition will assist in this and all outputs will be released under a Creative Commons licence.

Feature Analysis of Metadata Schemas for Records Management and Archives from the Viewpoint of Records Lifecycle

Digital resources are widely used in our modern society. However, we are facing fundamental problems to maintain and preserve digital resources over time. Several standard methods for preserving digital resources have been developed and are in use. It is widely recognized that metadata is one of the most important components for digital archiving and preservation. There are many metadata standards for archiving and preservation of digital resources, where each standard has its own feature in accordance with its primary application. This means that each schema has to be appropriately selected and tailored in accordance with a particular application. And, in some cases, those schemas are combined in a larger frame work and container metadata such as the DCMI application framework and METS. There are many metadata standards for archives of digital resources. We used the following metadata standards in this study for the feature analysis me metadata standards - AGLS Metadata which is defined to improve search of both digital resources and non-digital resources, ISAD(G) which is a commonly used standard for archives, EAD which is well used for digital archives, OAIS which defines a metadata framework for preserving digital objects, and PREMIS which is designed primarily for preservation of digital resources. In addition, we extracted attributes from the decision tree defined for digital preservation process by Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) and compared the set of attributes with these metadata standards. This paper shows the features of these metadata standards obtained through the feature analysis based on the records lifecycle model. The features are shown in a single frame work which makes it easy to relate the tasks in the lifecycle to metadata elements of these standards. As a result of the detailed analysis of the metadata elements, we clarified the features of the standards from the viewpoint of relationships between the elements and the lifecycle stages. Mapping between metadata schemas is often required in the long-term preservation process because different schemes are used in the records lifecycle. Therefore, it is crucial to build a unified framework to enhance interoperability of these schemes. This study presents a basis for the interoperability of different metadata schemas used in digital archiving and preservation.

The Cedars Project

Digital Preservation has become such a pressing issue for libraries world-wide that it is easy to forget what an unknown quantity it was when the Cedars project began in 1998. The Final Report from the RLG/CPA Task Force on Digital Archiving was released in 1996 and this provided a catalyst for further action within the U.K. The Cedars Project was initially funded for three years as part of the final phase of the UK eLib project. An additional year was subsequently funded to enable consolidation and wider dissemination of its findings. The Cedars project made a significant contribution to digital preservation and was able to forge good working relationships with colleagues working in related areas. It delivered both heightened awareness of digital preservation as a critical strategic issue at the broad level, as well as some specific deliverables designed to provide practical support at the operational level. Now that the Cedars project has ended, the primary responsibility within the UK for ensuring the momentum is not lost will rest with the recently formed Digital Preservation Coalition. Significant developments overseas will also feed into the global digital preservation agenda.

SHAPING COURSE. The Development of the Strategy for the e-Depot of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek,National Library of the Netherlands, in a National and International Context

Operating an international archive for digital information resources by a relatively small organization as the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) asks for a firm foundation of its policy. Continuing research and development efforts to secure permanent preservation and access to electronic information on a national and international scale require substantial financial, technical and staffing commitments. Cooperation in sharing resources and knowledge is called for. In the national context of the Netherlands the KB recently took the initiative to build the National Digital Preservation Coalition. All relevant sectors of Dutch society are represented. Its aim is to develop a national infrastructure and to assign clear responsibilities. In the European arena the KB, together with the British Library, started the European Alliance for Permanent Access to the Records of Science. The Alliance works towards the widespread and joint responsibility for maintaining the records of science by all major stakeholders, including national governments and the EU. In the global context the KB developed the concept of the "Safe Places Network" . This Network will include a limited number of institutions with certified digital archives for scientific publications, sharing responsibility for complete, world-wide coverage and allocate tasks accordingly.

The Digital Preservation Coalition

This article describes what the Digital Preservation Coalition is and why it was established. It outlines the coalition's activities and summarizes its main achievements and current programme of events. It concentrates particularly on two areas: the recently completed UK Needs Assessment and the Digital Preservation Training Programme. The article outlines some main digital preservation themes and discusses international activities. The final part of the article looks at some current key themes in digital preservation and some of the main challenges it faces.

The Digital Preservation Coalition

ABSTRACT The Digital Preservation Coalition was formed in the belief that no single organisation, sector, or indeed country, can hope to single-handedly address all the challenges and issues associated with ensuring continuing meaningful access to the growing volume of digital information. It was launched in February 2002 with an initial membership of 19, and has grown to 27 members as of April 2005. While the emphasis is on developing a digital preservation agenda within the UK, the high-level issues are of course global in nature and so collaboration and communication with colleagues working overseas is another essential characteristic of the DPC There are a number of assumptions underlying the DPC: • Intense collaboration and cooperation across and between sectors are essential. • There is a far wider range of key players who need to be involved at various different stages in the lifecycle of digital resources. • There is still a pressing and increasingly urgent need for advocacy and awareness-raising and to raise the profile of digital preservation to a much wider community. This article describes the formation of the DPC and explores some of the activities undertaken to help to accelerate the digital preservation agenda in the UK. Maggie Jones is the Executive Secretary of the Digital Preservation Coalition, Innovation Centre, York Science Park, Heslington, York YO10 5DG, United Kingdom.

The digital preservation coalition

Digital preservation has been regarded as a matter of increasingly urgent priority in the UK for a number of years. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the British Library hosted a Workshop at the University of Warwick in 1995 to determine what needed to be done to develop an agenda for the UK. Since then, there has been a great deal of effort and progress, coupled with a growing imperative to move beyond theoretical research and into practical digital preservation programmes. The Digital Preservation Coalition, launched in February 2002, aims to leverage maximum benefit from the activities being undertaken individually and co‐operatively by member institutions, and to provide a catalyst for further action.

Preserving UK digital library collections

The long‐term access to and preservation of research collections in digital form is an issue of increasing concern to research libraries around the world. This article provides an overview of selected issues, projects and initiatives in digital preservation in the UK. These include the Joint Information Systems Committee/National Preservation Office research studies, the CEDARS project, the National Electronic Site Licensing Initiative (NESLI), legal deposit of electronic publications, the preservation management of digital materials handbook, and the Arts and Humanities Data Service. It concludes with details of the proposed Digital Preservation Coalition, which aims to develop a UK digital preservation agenda within an international context.

The JISC digital preservation focus and the digital preservation coalition

Collaboration is widely seen as being essential for digital preservation but recognised by practitioners as being often as challenging as addressing digital preservation itself. This paper outlines the programme and activities of the JISC Digital Preservation Focus and the proposed Digital Preservation Coalition and the rationale which has led to these developments to foster collaboration. It will be relevant both to those directly affected by these developments in the UK and to an international audience interested in the general approaches adopted and specific programmes that are being developed.