Digital preservation and long-term access to the content of electronic serials

This paper is an investigation of digital preservation issues that are related to the development and use of scholarly online electronic serials (e-serials). Firstly, some background topics are discussed. These include: a discussion of what preservation means in the context of e-serials; a look at the current and future development of scholarly communication; and an outline of the major formats currently used for the distribution of e-serials. Digital preservation issues are then discussed in more detail, including an examination of the technical difficulties of preserving information in digital form. The paper then considers some preservation strategies that have been proposed, including technology emulation and data migration and the role of metadata. There follows a brief introduction to some important non-technical issues. These include: the difficulty of ensuring the authenticity of digital resources; the changing intellectual property rights context; and a discussion of who should have responsibility for preserving e-serials and the criteria that could be used for selecting digital content for preservation.