More than 2 million research papers have disappeared from the Internet

Nature  March 4, 2024
A researcher at the University of London tested 7,438,037 works labelled with digital object identifiers (DOIs) and found that one-quarter of scholarly articles are not being properly archived and preserved indicating that systems to preserve papers online have failed to keep pace with the growth of research output. The sample was made up of a random selection of up to 1,000 registered to each member organization. Twenty-eight percent of these works — more than two million articles — did not appear in a major digital archive. Small publishers are at higher risk of failing to preserve articles than are large ones. Archiving involves infrastructure, technology, money, and expertise that many smaller organizations do not have access to. According to the author some measures that could improve digital preservation, include stronger requirements at DOI registration agencies and better education and awareness of the issue among publishers and researchers. The author acknowledges that the study has limitations: namely that it tracked only articles with DOIs, and that it did not search every digital repository for articles… read more.