Archiving and Preservation

Fight Medicine treats the preservation of published articles and their metadata as a condition of publication. Preservation is maintained at three levels: publisher-held copies, persistent identifiers, and independent third-party deposit.

Publisher-held copies

Sears Publishing Company retains, for every published article and every version of it, the editable source files, the exact files distributed to readers, and an archival master in a format selected for longevity. Copies are held in geographically separated storage under periodic fixity verification. When a retained format approaches obsolescence, the files are migrated and the earlier copy is retained alongside the migrated one. A preserved copy represents the version of record at the time of deposit; corrections and new versions are documented under the Corrections and Crossmark policy, and earlier preserved states are retained rather than overwritten.

Persistent identifiers and metadata

Every article is registered with Crossref under the publisher's DOI prefix and carries stable bibliographic metadata containing identifiers, citation information and access terms. Resolution targets are updated when addresses change, so each DOI continues to resolve to the current or preserved copy. Registered identifiers are never reassigned or reused. The journal's metadata is also exposed through the OAI-PMH protocol for harvesting by libraries and indexing services.

Independent preservation

The journal deposits its content in the PKP Preservation Network, a distributed dark archive built on LOCKSS technology and operated by the Public Knowledge Project, in which content is held across geographically dispersed academic nodes and released for public access on a trigger event. Trigger events include permanent cessation of the journal or publisher, sustained unavailability of an article at its registered location, or loss of the publisher's practical ability to maintain access. Deposit begins on assignment of the journal's electronic ISSN; the deposit status and coverage start date are recorded on this page once active. Publisher-held copies and identifier registration are in place now and continue regardless.

Scope and review

This policy covers every article, version and supplementary file published by the journal, from the first issue forward. It is reviewed annually and whenever the preservation arrangements change. Preservation inquiries, including requests from libraries and archives, are addressed to [email protected].

Policy adopted October 2026.