My work features prominently in a Nature editorial today. Great to see digital preservation being taken seriously. "Millions of research articles are absent from major digital archives. This worrying finding, [...] was laid bare in a study by Martin Eve" www.nature.com/articles/d41... - ThreadSky

eve.gd • 209 days ago

My work features prominently in a Nature editorial today. Great to see digital preservation being taken seriously.

"Millions of research articles are absent from major digital archives. This worrying finding, [...] was laid bare in a study by Martin Eve" https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03842-z

Comments

rachelgreenblatt.bsky.social•209 days ago

📌

mperkinsmcvey.bsky.social•208 days ago

To add to this, it is shocking how many papers, even historically important ones, written less than 100 years ago can only be acquired from select libraries and haven't been digitized.

kat-fan.bsky.social•208 days ago

No one to pay for it and store it. Lots of projects were even funded to digitize but with no long term storage plans - it all dissolves.

mperkinsmcvey.bsky.social•208 days ago

Sadly, yes. A grotesque failing to dwell in a world raised on the cumulative sediment of historical knowledge and experience, only for that foundation to be entirely disregarded.

steveparks.me•209 days ago

I know a senior civil servant who was very concerned about this. He gathered a small team and funding to at least work on preserving and sharing research that public sector had commissioned (a lot).
Brexit brought change of ministers and priorities and project was strangled.

hanssues.bsky.social•208 days ago

Some publishers (e.g., Wiley) already disavow responsibility for longer-term accessibility for online supplements.

nannathylstrup.bsky.social•209 days ago

cc @ktmac.bsky.social !

brimwats.com•209 days ago

that's exciting!! congratulations!

heroicendeavour.bsky.social•209 days ago

Fantastic to see your work recognised like this. And once again, so much comes down to copyright legislation working against the public good, instead of for it. 😞

tschmauck.bsky.social•209 days ago

I found this out while reading for a historical review, even many classical articles on the field of medical sciences are simply not available, which I did not expect.

epicdylan.com•209 days ago

A fascinating read.

“Another option could be for institutions and funding bodies to include text and data archiving as a requirement in research projects, along with publishing papers.“

Are you interested in decentralized publishing technology for this problem?

rouhiroo.bsky.social•209 days ago

Martin, great stuff. Thank you for sharing. Given how "at risk" this content is, how are we ever going to sort curation/preservation for DATA, if we can't do it for pubs?? #opendata #openscience #whatisitforifitsnotFAIR

eve.gd•209 days ago

It's a real worry - the problem won't even be considered until data is a first-class research object, but by then it will be too late. We really need to build a "data" preservation solution ASAP.

rouhiroo.bsky.social•209 days ago

Unless we can find viable business models (or rely 100% on govt intervention), there's no way. It's not profitable, requires such meticulous curation, and is SOOO field specific. I don't have high hopes, alas #wompwomp

eve.gd•209 days ago

The problem is that "data" means so many things. Practically anything, in fact. And preserving the associated software that can open it - if proprietary - makes this very hard.

alttag.bsky.social•209 days ago

I particularly worry about this for tagged qualitative data. So many other kinds of data have open formats, but it’s more difficult for things like MaxQDA.

(Yes, it has XML export, but that’s not the same as natively readable.)

rouhiroo.bsky.social•209 days ago

My challenge with the current #openscience paradigm right now is the blunt force #opendata mandates w/ no mechanisms to make it FAIR. We are wasting SO much time, money, effort to enable compliance for stuff that no one will find and cannot be used. There has to be a better way.

deltathink.bsky.social•209 days ago

Thanks for calling attention to this mission critical part of the #ScholComm ecosystem!

clancyny.bsky.social•209 days ago

Great to see this, Martin. And, in a Nature editorial, no less. Thank you for your very important and painstaking labors.

kat-fan.bsky.social•208 days ago

There are many digital preservation professionals that have been trained (I'm one of them) - and there is a serious lack of available jobs and project funding. Everyone forgets that digital content isn't always forever. Paywalls and streaming services create serious future issues.

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