Urgent Action Needed to Preserve Scholarly Electronic Journals

Abstract

"Digital preservation represents one of the grand challenges facing higher education. In field after field, research and teaching are generating data, reports, publications, teaching materials, and other forms of scholarly communication in digital formats. Research and teaching are also increasingly dependent on data mining tools and other computer-based techniques that require the long-term persistence of these various forms of digital information to advance knowledge. Yet as the creation and use of digital information accelerate, responsibility for preservation is diffuse, and the responsible parties—scholars, university and college administrators, research and academic libraries, and publishers—have been slow to identify and invest in the necessary infrastructure to ensure that the published scholarly record represented in electronic formats remains intact over the long-term. Inaction puts the digital portion of the scholarly record—and the ability to use it in conjunction with other information that is necessary to advance knowledge—increasingly at risk, and solutions may require unique arrangements within the academy for sharing preservation responsibility."