Digital Preservation of e-Prints

The issue of whether or not to archive e-prints is something very much open to debate. Certainly the scientific community is of two minds about it. On one hand, there is arXiv.org that preserves all versions of any submitted paper. On the other, you have the failed AMS e-print server that removed papers after a pre-defined expiration date. In the library world, the Open Archives Initiative suggests long-term safekeeping, whereas Stephen Pinfield, of the University of Nottingham, and Hamish James, of King's College London, say this "loose use" of the term "archive" shouldn't necessarily imply a curation or long-term preservation function.

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september03/pinfield/09pinfield.html
(D-Lib Magazine Sep 2003)

Some institutions see no reason to complicate the matter by focusing on preservation, when priority should be given to filling repositories. But, say Pinfield and James, "... filling repositories and preserving their content need not be mutually exclusive. They are two parts of the same ultimate objective -- providing easy access to the literature, now and in the future." The biggest challenge -- of making sure content can be accessed in the future -- is improving with broader use of standardized metadata and restricted file formats.

Posted by Tom on October 02, 2003