DIGITAL PRESERVATION POLICY

General Principles

Sapiens Sciences (ISSN: 3072-7936) is committed to ensuring the long-term preservation, integrity, authenticity, accessibility, discoverability, and permanent availability of all published scholarly content.

The journal implements technical, organizational, and administrative measures designed to safeguard the scientific record and ensure continuous access to its publications, even in the event of technological failures, infrastructure changes, software obsolescence, cybersecurity incidents, or platform migrations.

Digital preservation constitutes an essential component of the journal’s commitment to scientific communication, research transparency, and the long-term dissemination of scholarly knowledge.

1. Backup and Information Security

The journal performs regular backups of:

  • Editorial databases.
  • Manuscript files.
  • Published articles.
  • Metadata records.
  • Website content.
  • Editorial management systems.

Backup procedures are integrated into the journal’s information security and business continuity strategy to minimize the risk of data loss and facilitate recovery in the event of technical disruptions or unforeseen incidents.

Access to preservation systems is restricted to authorized personnel and protected through appropriate security measures.

2. Technological Sustainability and System Migration

Sapiens Sciences maintains and periodically updates the software, platforms, and technological infrastructure used for editorial management, publication, storage, and dissemination of scientific content.

To mitigate risks associated with technological obsolescence, the journal may implement:

  • Software upgrades.
  • Platform migrations.
  • Metadata conversion processes.
  • File format normalization.
  • Infrastructure modernization initiatives.

Whenever technological migrations are required, all reasonable efforts will be made to preserve:

  • Content integrity.
  • Metadata accuracy.
  • Persistent identifiers.
  • Editorial records.
  • Citation continuity.

3. Persistent Identification and Metadata Preservation

The journal maintains comprehensive metadata records to support:

  • Content identification.
  • Discoverability.
  • Interoperability.
  • Citation tracking.
  • Long-term preservation.

All published articles receive a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which provides a persistent and globally recognized identifier that facilitates permanent citation, retrieval, and access.

The journal preserves bibliographic, administrative, and preservation metadata associated with each published article.

4. Preservation Formats and Long-Term Accessibility

Published content is stored and distributed using widely accepted, non-proprietary, and preservation-friendly digital formats that support long-term accessibility and interoperability.

Depending on the journal’s publishing infrastructure, articles may be made available in formats such as:

  • PDF
  • HTML
  • XML (when applicable)
  • Other structured scholarly publishing formats

The journal may periodically migrate content to updated formats when necessary to maintain accessibility and prevent technological obsolescence.

5. Digital Preservation Networks and Archiving Systems

To strengthen long-term preservation and ensure redundancy of published content, Sapiens Sciences participates in, or may progressively integrate with, recognized scholarly preservation initiatives and distributed archiving systems, including:

  • PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN)
  • LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe)
  • CLOCKSS (Controlled LOCKSS), when applicable
  • Institutional preservation repositories
  • Certified digital archiving services
  • Other trusted preservation infrastructures adopted by the journal

These systems create geographically distributed and redundant copies of journal content, ensuring long-term preservation and recovery in the event of data loss or service interruption.

6. Additional Preservation Strategies

The journal applies complementary preservation measures, including:

  • Retention of original submission files.
  • Preservation of published versions of record.
  • Maintenance of editorial decision records.
  • Long-term storage of associated metadata.
  • Periodic monitoring of file integrity.
  • Format migration when necessary.
  • Disaster recovery procedures.
  • Business continuity planning.

These measures contribute to the sustainability and permanence of the journal’s digital scholarly assets.

7. Interoperability and Metadata Harvesting

Sapiens Sciences implements internationally recognized interoperability standards that facilitate metadata exchange, indexing, discovery, and dissemination across scholarly communication systems.

The journal supports the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), enabling automatic harvesting of article metadata by repositories, indexing services, aggregators, library systems, and academic discovery platforms.

Technical Specifications

The implementation of these standards enhances the visibility, interoperability, discoverability, and international dissemination of the journal’s scientific content.

8. Commitment to Long-Term Preservation

Sapiens Sciences is committed to preserving the scholarly record for future generations by adopting internationally recognized preservation practices and continuously improving its digital infrastructure.

The journal strives to ensure that all published content remains:

  • Accessible.
  • Discoverable.
  • Retrievable.
  • Identifiable.
  • Interoperable.
  • Citable.
  • Usable over time.

Final Statement

Sapiens Sciences recognizes digital preservation as a fundamental responsibility of scholarly publishing. Through the implementation of persistent identifiers, preservation metadata, distributed archiving systems, interoperability protocols, technological sustainability measures, and long-term access strategies, the journal seeks to ensure the permanent availability and integrity of the scientific record.

The journal remains committed to protecting and preserving the knowledge it publishes for researchers, institutions, policymakers, and society worldwide, in accordance with international best practices in digital preservation and scholarly communication.