One of JSTOR's fundamental objectives is to serve as a lasting and trusted electronic archive. That goal has always had both a prospective and a retrospective aspect. Our role is not only to convert previously published literature from paper to electronic form, but also to capture content that is published in electronic form, and preserve it for future generations of researchers. Up until recently, however, this commitment to e-archiving has not been evident because we have not actually received and provided access to "born-digital" content.

We have in place many of the components of the model necessary to act as an e-archive. For example, our moving wall provides a mechanism for JSTOR to receive electronic content. Up until now, the length of the moving wall, coupled with the fact that most publishers have only recently begun to publish their content electronically, had made it premature for us to receive born-digital content. Over the course of the last year, however, the moving wall has met up with the born-digital content for an increasing number of titles, and so the time is now upon us to archive these electronic materials.

There is growing recognition of the need to address the e-archiving challenge among key constituents in the community. As Eileen Fenton, JSTOR's Director of Production, and the leader of JSTOR's e-archiving efforts, explains:

Scholars have made it clear that the long-term preservation of electronic files is very important to them. Likewise, librarians have been vociferous in their need for assurances that the electronic content that these scholars have come to depend upon will be available in the future. Finally, publishers continue to express their interest in moving to a digital environment and would benefit from having a layer of archival protection backing up their electronic products.

As we have developed our e-archiving program, implementation challenges in five broad areas have emerged. We believe that these broad classes of issues would be faced by any organization attempting to establish an e-archive.

Rights and responsibilities: In order to ensure the validity and functionality of the material in an electronic archive, the archive provider needs to secure the long-term rights to manage and replicate the data. These rights include the ability to modify the data as needed to ensure its ongoing functionality as technologies change. The provider must also decide what level of access is allowable, determining whether to offer a "light" archive or a "dark" archive. We believe that providing a "light" archive is extremely important, as offering access to users is a sustainable way to assure them that the content in the archive remains viable. In JSTOR's case, the moving wall is our way of establishing a light archive that does not threaten participating publishers' revenue models.

Content: While the parameters of the printed journal are well understood, the content in digital journals often transcends the traditional boundaries of volumes, issues and pages. E-journals might include features such as banner ads, video clips, or links to outside material that may not be controlled by the publisher. Decisions must be made about what needs to be included, as well as about how much of the original "look-and-feel" must be replicated and preserved. Issues such as format and display raise still more questions. For example, which issue should be archived if a publisher produces copies in SGML, HTML and PDF formats? JSTOR is working systematically through such questions as part of its e-archiving pilot work with specific journals.

Functionality: The issue of functionality is linked closely with the issues related to content. Electronic publications typically include links to external sources cited by an author, or to other services or products available from the publisher. JSTOR and publishers must determine which links (if any) should function in an archived copy and what criteria should guide their selection. The question of how to maintain these links and whether or not to preserve features such as animated graphics and sound, by including special software, must also be resolved.

Migration: To act as an archive, data must remain accessible even if technologies change. This requirement -- the exact parameters of which cannot be known now -- means that an archive must be prepared to make an ongoing and significant investment in order to ensure that the expertise, equipment, and financial resources are in place to meet the demands of migration as frequently as is necessary.

Business Model: Migrating data effectively through multiple generations of technological change requires resources. Any long-term archive must have a business model in place to fund the ongoing investments that will be required. In our view, this is a major challenge facing the higher education community. Although there is unanimous agreement among constituents that e-archiving is important, this enthusiasm is not yet matched by budget lines that support the objective. There is no electronic archiving budget, nor are there at present genuine opportunities to raise money for the task. This must change if widespread archives are to flourish and play the role that libraries have played for generations in the print medium.

According to Kevin Guthrie, President of JSTOR:

There is no perfect solution to the archiving question, and thus, it will be important for a layered approach to evolve with a certain amount of redundancy. JSTOR is eager to contribute to the solution by developing an effective and reliable archiving model for JSTOR titles, and we will continue to inform the community about our progress on this important issue.

Last updated on September 8, 2006