The Clinical Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (CJOG) is dedicated to ensuring the long-term preservation, accessibility, and integrity of all scholarly content it publishes. This Preservation and Archiving Policy outlines the methods, partnerships, technologies, and best practices used to guarantee that all articles, metadata, and supplementary materials remain permanently available to researchers worldwide. Our commitment reflects international standards for digital preservation, including Portico, LOCKSS/CLOCKSS, Crossref, and global open-access archiving frameworks.

Purpose of the Preservation and Archiving Policy

The objectives of CJOG’s preservation policy are to:

Maintain permanent access to all published content
Guarantee content integrity and authenticity over time
Protect the scholarly record against technological obsolescence
Comply with indexing requirements and library preservation standards
Support institutional archiving and long-term repository infrastructure
Ensure continuity in case of disaster, system failure, or publisher transitions

Primary Archiving Systems

1. Portico Digital Preservation

CJOG uses Portico as its primary dark archive preservation partner. Portico:

Preserves all published articles, metadata, and supplementary files
Stores multiple redundant copies across secure locations
Guarantees access continuity in cases of journal discontinuation
Supports secure migration to new formats as technology evolves

2. LOCKSS and CLOCKSS Networks

CJOG supports archiving through LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) and CLOCKSS to ensure distributed preservation.

Key features include:

Community-based digital preservation managed by library consortia
Multiple, geographically distributed servers
Redundant and independent verification of data integrity
Automatic repair of corrupted copies by peer nodes

3. Publisher and Institutional Mirrors

CJOG maintains internal mirrored servers with:

Redundant data centers
Automatic cloud backups
Version-controlled content management

Server redundancy ensures uninterrupted access even during maintenance or regional outages.

Archiving of Metadata and Persistent Identifiers

Metadata is preserved alongside article content to ensure future discoverability and interoperability across systems.

Crossref DOI Registration

CJOG registers all articles with Crossref, ensuring:

Permanent DOI links that resolve indefinitely
Cross-platform linking to citations and metrics
Preservation of citation relationships
Automated redundancy through Crossref archives

Machine-Readable Metadata Formats

To support long-term preservation, CJOG exports metadata in:

JATS XML (Journal Article Tag Suite)
Crossref XML
Dublin Core
OAI_DC
Schema.org JSON-LD

These formats ensure compatibility across institutional repositories, aggregators, and future technologies.

Institutional Repository Deposits

CJOG supports automatic and manual deposit to institutional repositories via:

OAI-PMH harvesting
Library-maintained archival collections
National archives such as PubMed Central, Europe PMC (for eligible works)

Content Format Standards for Long-Term Preservation

Published content is preserved in a combination of durable, industry-standard file formats:

PDF/A for long-term preservation of the Version of Record (VOR)
JATS XML for semantic archiving
High-resolution image formats (TIFF, PNG)
HTML for web accessibility and ease of indexing

These formats are selected to ensure content remains readable and migratable as technologies evolve.

Digital Preservation Workflow

CJOG follows a structured workflow to ensure all content is preserved consistently:

Article acceptance and preparation of production-ready files
Generation of preservation formats (PDF/A, XML, supplemental data packages)
Deposit into Portico and LOCKSS/CLOCKSS
Crossref DOI registration and metadata propagation
Distribution to institutional repositories through OAI-PMH
Local server backup and mirrored storage

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

CJOG maintains a formal disaster recovery plan to ensure resilience and continuity of operations.

Disaster Recovery Features

Daily encrypted backups across three geographic regions
Monthly off-site backups using cold storage
Failover hosting environments
Content redundancy through Portico and library-based systems
Automatic DOI resolution maintained by Crossref even if site is offline

Continuity Scenarios Covered

Server failures
Cyberattacks and security breaches
System corruption
Publisher transitions or ownership changes
Catastrophic data loss

Content Migration Over Time

As technologies evolve, digital preservation requires periodic migration of formats, metadata, and systems.

CJOG follows these principles:

Ensure backwards compatibility for existing material
Convert outdated formats into modern standards
Preserve semantic meaning through canonical XML structures
Maintain version control and change logs for all migrated content

Migration Examples

Migrating XML from JATS v1.0 to JATS v1.3
Converting PDF to PDF/A-3 for archival stability
Updating metadata schemas to accommodate new ORCID/DOI fields

Preservation of Supplementary Materials

Supplementary materials including datasets, high-resolution images, video files, and appendices are preserved and archived along with primary articles.

Accepted Supplemental Formats:

CSV, XLSX (datasets)
MP4 (video)
TIFF, PNG, SVG (images)
Python/R scripts
Appendix PDF documents

Content Integrity and Authenticity

CJOG implements several safeguards to maintain content reliability:

Checksum verification
Digital signatures on archival packages
Regular integrity audits for LOCKSS and Portico
Crossref API monitoring for DOI health

Examples of Preservation Scenarios

Scenario	Preservation Strategy
Publisher website temporarily offline	DOI resolves via Crossref → archived content accessible via Portico
File corruption on primary servers	Automatic restoration from mirrored servers or LOCKSS nodes
Technological obsolescence (e.g., outdated image formats)	Migrated to modern preservation formats
Publisher ceases operations	Portico releases preserved content to the academic community

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How long does CJOG preserve articles?

Indefinitely. Preservation systems ensure permanent availability.

Does CJOG guarantee DOI functionality forever?

Yes. Crossref maintains DOI resolution regardless of publisher status.

What happens if a published article becomes corrupted?

It is restored automatically from LOCKSS, Portico, or redundancy backups.

Can institutional repositories rely on CJOG’s OAI-PMH endpoint?

Yes. It is maintained for ongoing harvesting with high uptime.

Are supplementary files preserved with the same standards?

Yes. All supplemental data is archived using durable formats and metadata.

Conclusion

CJOG’s Preservation and Archiving Policy reinforces the journal’s commitment to maintaining a stable, permanent, and accessible scholarly record. By integrating gold-standard preservation systems, robust metadata frameworks, and future-proof content migration strategies, CJOG guarantees that its published work will remain discoverable and usable for generations.