Digital storage and preservation

Preserving scientific records in digital environments is a multidimensional challenge that requires a planned and technically sound institutional response. Digital archives—whether PDF documents, datasets, or source code—face persistent threats from technological obsolescence, both in terms of formats and media and in terms of the software and hardware environments needed to interpret them. In addition, risks inherent in digital asset management, such as data corruption or the cessation of operations of the publishing platform, compromise the long-term accessibility of scientific contributions.

In this context, Casuallity conceives digital preservation as an active, systematic, and strategic process aimed at ensuring the durability, authenticity, and integrity of published scientific collections. By implementing archiving policies in accordance with international standards and, where feasible, depositing in distributed repositories and preservation networks, the journal ensures that the scientific record remains a reliable and accessible source for future generations of researchers, beyond the technological validity of the moment of its publication.

The open source editorial management and publishing platform used by Causality is OJS (Open Journal Systems), developed by PKP (Public Knowledge Project). OJS integrates a set of features that promote best practices to ensure that published academic content remains accessible and usable in the long term. Preservation in an OJS journal is implemented through a multi-layered approach.

Technical and Infrastructure Preservation

Open Source and Standards: As open source software, OJS avoids the obsolescence associated with proprietary commercial products. The global community can keep the software up to date and support it.

Stable File Formats: OJS encourages the use of long-term preservation formats. The most common is PDF/A (an ISO standard for preservation), which can be configured as the primary format for publications.

Structured Metadata: OJS generates and exports standardized metadata (Dublin Core) that is essential for future discovery and contextualization of content, regardless of the system.

Systematic Backups: Casualty is responsible for performing regular, tested backups of the entire database and uploaded files, storing them in geographically separate locations.

Preservation through External Services (The Most Robust Practice)

OJS allows integration with secure and specialized archiving services, among the most common are:

LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). It is both a philosophy and an open source technology. Its goal is to enable libraries and institutions to create and preserve their own copies of material to which they have a legal subscription.

This critical systems in the digital preservation ecosystem, ensuring that academic knowledge survives technological, economic, and organizational changes.