Archiving & indexer readiness

1 Purpose & scope

Why long-term archiving and indexer readiness are core to IUMS journals.

IUMS medical journals aim to provide a reliable, permanent scholarly record. Long-term digital preservation and readiness for major indexing services are essential for:

• ensuring that articles remain accessible and citable over decades;
• supporting evaluation by funders, institutions and assessors; and
• maximising the reach and impact of research published in IUMS journals.

This policy describes how IUMS journals:

• plan for electronic backup and long-term preservation of content;
• use recognised archival formats and standards;
• provide rich metadata, DOIs and licence information; and
• align their practices with the expectations of DOAJ, PubMed Central, Scopus, Web of Science and similar indexers.

2 Core archiving principles

The principles guiding our archiving and indexer-readiness strategy.

IUMS follows international principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing, including those endorsed by COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME. In particular:

• Durability – journal content should remain accessible even if a title moves platform, changes ownership or ceases publication.
• Redundancy – more than one copy of the content is preserved, ideally in independent systems and jurisdictions.
• Standards-based – we use widely adopted formats such as JATS XML, PDF/A and persistent identifiers (DOIs, ISSNs, ORCID).
• Traceability – corrections, retractions and updates are linked to the Version of Record (VoR) rather than silently replacing it.
• Machine readability – metadata, licences and full text are prepared to support harvesting, text-and-data mining and automated indexing where permitted.

3 Long-term digital preservation strategy

How IUMS ensures that content remains available in the long term.

To guard against loss of content due to technical failures, platform migrations or organisational changes, IUMS journals aim to:

• maintain a complete, authoritative archive of all Versions of Record on secure servers managed by or on behalf of IUMS;
• deposit content, where feasible, with one or more trusted preservation services such as national libraries, subject repositories or independent archival programmes; and
• ensure that the journal’s archiving arrangements are openly stated on the journal information pages, in line with transparency recommendations from DOAJ and COPE.

Over time, IUMS may strengthen this strategy through participation in recognised preservation schemes (for example, community-driven dark-archive networks or discipline-specific archives) as resources and partnerships allow.

Specific archiving arrangements may differ between journals; where this is the case, the applicable arrangements are listed on the journal’s “About” or “Archiving policy” page.

4 Local backup & business continuity

Day-to-day safeguards against data loss and service disruption.

In addition to external archiving, IUMS maintains local backup and continuity measures, which may include:

• regular, automated backups of databases and file stores to geographically separate locations;
• versioned backups that allow restoration of past states in case of accidental deletion or corruption;
• disaster-recovery procedures to restore website functionality after major incidents; and
• routine testing of restoration processes to ensure that archives are usable, not just stored.

These measures are aligned with recognised digital-preservation practice, emphasising multiple copies, integrity checks and documented recovery workflows.

5 File formats & archival standards

Ensuring that preserved content remains interpretable in the future.

IUMS journals aim to use formats that are widely supported and designed for long-term preservation. In particular:

• Full text – where feasible, articles are prepared in JATS XML (Journal Article Tag Suite) based on NISO standards, alongside human-readable HTML/PDF. JATS is widely used by archives and repositories to preserve structural and semantic information.
• PDF – published PDFs follow best practices for long-term readability (for example, PDF/A-compliant fonts and embedded figures).
• Figures & images – master image files are stored in non-proprietary or widely supported formats (for example, TIFF or high-quality PNG/JPEG) with sufficient resolution for both display and preservation.
• Supplementary materials – where data or code are deposited alongside articles, authors are encouraged to use open, well-documented formats (for example, CSV, JSON, TXT, standard statistical formats) and recognised repositories when possible.

For journals that participate in PubMed Central or similar archives, XML and associated files are prepared to meet the relevant repository’s technical specifications and tagging guidelines.

6 Version of record, updates & corrections

Managing changes while preserving a stable scholarly record.

The Version of Record (VoR) is the final, authoritative version of an article as published on the IUMS platform. To maintain a trustworthy archive:

• VoRs remain permanently available and citable via their DOI;
• corrections, expressions of concern and retractions are issued as separate, citable notices that link to the affected article; and
• significant changes are recorded via formal updates rather than silently altering the original text.

Where technical errors in files or metadata are discovered (for example, XML tagging mistakes or broken links), corrected files are supplied both to the IUMS platform and to any external archives or indexers that hold full text or metadata, so that the archival record remains consistent.

7 Identifiers, metadata & licensing

Making content discoverable, linkable and reusable.

Rich, accurate metadata are crucial for both archiving and indexer readiness. IUMS journals therefore aim to:

• assign a persistent DOI to each Version of Record and, where appropriate, to issues, volumes and supplemental materials;
• register DOIs with a recognised registration agency (for example, Crossref) using detailed metadata including titles, abstracts, authors, affiliations, funding, references and licence information;
• include stable identifiers such as ISSN/eISSN at journal level and ORCID iDs for authors where provided; and
• expose licence metadata (for example, Creative Commons URLs and effective dates) in both human-readable and machine- readable form to support reuse and text-and-data mining.

These practices help libraries, repositories, indexing services and discovery platforms to interpret rights correctly, maintain accurate citations and harvest content reliably.

8 General indexer readiness

Cross-cutting requirements for major abstracting & indexing services.

While each indexer has its own selection criteria, most reputable databases expect journals to demonstrate:

• clear editorial and peer review policies, including handling of ethics and misconduct;
• regular publication schedules and stable online availability of content;
• transparent open access and licensing information;
• robust archiving and preservation arrangements; and
• accurate metadata and persistent identifiers at article level.

IUMS journals work towards these requirements holistically: the archiving strategy described on this page supports readiness for DOAJ, PubMed Central, Scopus, Web of Science and other services that assess journal quality and sustainability.

9 DOAJ & DOAJ Seal expectations

Long-term preservation and transparency for open access directories.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and related initiatives explicitly require journals to:

• state an archiving and preservation policy on the journal website;
• use recognised long-term preservation services or robust institutional solutions; and
• ensure that DOIs, licensing and editorial information are clear and consistent.

For journals aiming at the DOAJ Seal or similar higher- level recognition, expectations often include:

• long-term digital preservation via trusted third parties;
• persistent identifiers (DOIs) for all articles;
• machine-readable licence information; and
• strong policies on ethics, authorship and transparency.

This archiving & indexer readiness policy is designed to support IUMS journals in meeting those criteria, in combination with the Ethics, Copyright and APC policies.

10 PubMed & PubMed Central readiness

Technical and policy alignment for biomedical indexing and archiving.

For biomedical and clinical titles, inclusion in PubMed and/or PubMed Central (PMC) is often a key goal. To support this, IUMS journals strive to:

• maintain high editorial and ethical standards consistent with recognised guidelines;
• publish on a regular schedule with clear peer review processes and complete issues/volumes;
• produce JATS XML or other compliant XML for full text, along with valid PDFs and image files that meet repository requirements; and
• keep XML and PDFs synchronised, with corrections or updates applied consistently to all formats and re-deposited when necessary.

Where individual IUMS journals deposit full text in PMC or similar archives, the technical specifications and responsibilities for file preparation and data quality are followed carefully to maintain a robust, durable archive.

11 Scopus & Web of Science readiness

Supporting evaluation by multidisciplinary indexing databases.

Scopus, Web of Science and similar citation databases evaluate journals on multiple dimensions, including editorial quality, publication regularity, international diversity, transparency and archiving. Although acceptance decisions remain entirely with those services, IUMS journals work towards:

• clear descriptions of peer review, editorial boards and ethics policies;
• stable online availability of at least several consecutive issues or volumes;
• DOIs and high-quality metadata for all articles;
• explicit archiving and preservation arrangements; and
• compliance with best practices on authorship, conflicts of interest, corrections and retractions.

Journals that wish to apply to these databases can use this policy as part of their documentation to demonstrate long-term preservation and platform stability.

12 Machine readability, discovery & harvesting

Making content easy for indexers and tools to harvest and interpret.

To support automated harvesting and discovery, IUMS works towards:

• consistent, structured HTML with clear tagging of titles, authors, abstracts and references;
• machine-readable metadata embedded in article pages (for example, using standard meta tags and structured data where appropriate);
• exposure of licence information and DOIs in a form that harvesting tools can reliably parse; and
• provision of sitemaps and/or feeds that help indexers discover new and updated content efficiently.

These practices facilitate inclusion in general search engines, subject databases, library discovery tools and text-and-data mining workflows, consistent with applicable licences and rights.

13 At-a-glance archiving & indexer readiness matrix

Summary only – individual journals may have additional or specific requirements.

14 Contact & support

Questions about archiving, preservation or indexer readiness.

Editors, authors, librarians and indexing services who have questions about our archiving and indexer-readiness arrangements can contact:

•  journals@iums.ac.ir

Policy version: v1.0 – last updated April 2025. This page will be updated as our preservation partnerships evolve and as indexer requirements change.