Archiving/Digital Preservation Policy

1. Purpose

The purpose of this policy is to ensure that all scholarly content published by UMed Press remains permanently accessible, discoverable, and citable, even in the event that the publisher or website ceases operation.
UMed Press is committed to maintaining the long-term digital preservation and integrity of all its journals and published articles.

2. Digital Preservation Strategy

UMed Press employs a multi-layered digital preservation approach, which includes:

  • Multiple online backups of all published content.

  • Off-site storage to protect against data loss or corruption.

  • Participation in third-party preservation networks and repositories.

Content is preserved in standard archival formats (PDF, XML, and metadata) to ensure compatibility with future systems and technologies.

3. Long-Term Archiving Services

UMed Press partners or intends to partner with recognized archiving organizations and repositories such as:

  • LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) – ensuring decentralized preservation across participating libraries.

  • CLOCKSS (Controlled LOCKSS) – for secure, long-term, open-access archiving.

  • PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN) – available for journals using the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform.

  • Internet Archive and institutional repositories for redundancy.

4. Self-Archiving by Authors

Authors are encouraged to self-archive their published work as follows:

  • Authors may deposit the final published PDF or accepted manuscript (post-print) in:

    • Institutional or subject-based repositories (e.g., ResearchGate, Academia.edu, SSRN).

    • Their personal or institutional websites.

  • Self-archiving must include proper citation and a link to the published version on the UMed Press website.

5. Metadata Preservation

  • UMed Press ensures that all articles are registered with Crossref (for DOI assignment and metadata archiving).

  • Metadata includes title, author(s), abstract, keywords, references, and publication date.

  • Crossref records provide permanent discoverability and citation linking even if the original URL changes.

6. Access and Retrieval

  • All archived content remains freely accessible to the public through the UMed Press website and associated repositories.

  • In the event of a system outage, backup copies are restored within 24–48 hours.

  • Archived content will never be removed or deleted from the repository systems.

7. Policy Review

This policy is reviewed annually to ensure compliance with evolving international preservation standards and technologies (e.g., CLOCKSS, PKP PN, LOCKSS).