The Embedding Preservability for New Forms of Scholarship project builds off of Enhancing Services to Preserve New Forms of Scholarship, a two-year project that addressed the risk to scholarship presented by a scarcity of preservation technology within the scholarly publishing field by identifying the challenges to long-term preservation inherent in commonly used file formats, publication structures, and workflows. It resulted in a set of 68 recommendations designed to guide publishers to create digital publications that are more likely to be preserved.
Scope
This project consists of three main activities:
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- Embedding with publishers during the production cycle of new works;
- Providing feedback to platform developers to inform/adjust features/functionality that improve preservability;
- Testing, refining, and expanding the phase one Guidelines for Preserving New Forms of Scholarship
Approach
A four-member embedding team including a digital preservation librarian, technical experts from two preservation services, and a project manager with process facilitation expertise will work directly with publishers throughout the production cycle to observe current practice, learn about the publisher’s processes and platform, and provide support as Guidelines are select and implemented. The team will share findings with platform developers to inform adjustments to features and functionality that improve preservability. Once published, preservation service partners will attempt to preserve the final work. The team will author an updated set of recommendations based on concrete evidence and a much richer understanding of what will actually work.