Remaining Future ProofPublishers and Digital Preservation

Eefke Smit

STM Director Standards and Technology

Berlin, APE 2014 Conference,

January 29, 2014

Preservation – why ?

“Alles van Waarde is Weerloos”

All Things of Value are Defenceless

LucebertDutch Poet, 1924-1994

Why DIGITAL preservation is important,especially in STM environments

Essential in STM publishing environments

1. Authors seek the eternal life via their publications

2. Publishers build the future Records of Science

3. Libraries wish to assure future access

4. Users wish to consult the collective memory

And all is now digital,

And digital stuff is extremely brittle.

The Dangers of Decay for anything Digital

• See Atlas of Digital Damages• Digital Decay can be caused by:

– Software is not backwards compatible– Hardware no longer exists– Storage medium unaccessible or decayed: bit rot !– Computer environment no longer supported– Website no longer exists, URL broken– Repository holders have disappeared– Location of files unclear, unknown– Metadata unreadable or incomprehendible– Access mechanisms broken (DRM)

5

Publishers collaborate in many initiatives• Portico, Clockss, KB e-depot, BL, APA, Aparsen• See the Keepers Registery (thekeepers.org): covers

22.000 ISSNs• Combination of preservation strategies:

Outsourcing, normalisation, migration, emulation• Agreements on disaster recovery and long term access

What matters most for publishers in DP

Solutions exist for:• Independent digital

archives:

E-Depot, Portico, Clockss

• Tools and services

• Persistent Identifiers:

DOIs widely used• Stakeholder

collaboration

Yet to be solved• How many archives?• Audits and Certification on future

reliability• Bringing down costs• Standards for metadating• New identifiers pop up:

interoperability framework needed• More stakeholder collaboration

needed• Chain solutions, from cradle to

archive

APARSEN, working towards a Centre of Excellence

• Aim: bring coherence, cohesion and continuity in digital preservation among a wide variety of stakeholder groups

• Project has 31 partners in 13 EU-countries• STM was a founding member of APA• Objective: Create a Centre of Excellence for tools,

services, consulting, research• Takes digital preservation to a higher level of

recognition• Raising awareness -> idenitifying gaps-> providing

recommendations -> sharing best practice

APARSEN Network of Excellence

Impressions

Important for publishers in APARSEN

• Trust in the reliability of repositories:– Self assessments (DSA)– Monitored self-auditing (Nestor – DIN approach)– Full certification ISO 16363

• Common metadating standards– Solve the identifier soup via interoperability frameworks– Collaboration throughout the chain

• Costs and requirements for depositing content– Cost modeling and cost comparing (see 4C project)– Business models– Innovation and research in easier ways of preservation

The New Challenges

• Digital Preservation is not just about texts and documents, it is multimedia

• In STM the new challenge is Research Data and Open Access solutions

• Publications will increasingly be multi-versioned, multi-sourced and multi-media

• See STM statements on working together with trustworthy digital repositories

• Ensure bi-directional linking between data and publications, • Agree on and ensure the use of persistent identifiers (DOI,

ORCID, ISNI)• Ensure integration of multimedia data and publications

“Hell is a place where nothing

connects to nothing”T.S. Eliott in his introduction to Dante’s Inferno.

He added:

“We are in the business of finding connections--within texts, between texts and contexts, between texts and ourselves, between our readings and …etc”

How does this relate to Digital Preservation ?

In Digital Preservation we are creating the connections to the future, in order to make sure that the future can make connections back to us.

Questions?

Eefke SmitInternational STM AssociationSmit@stm-assoc.org