Current status, stated plainly
The journal deposits into the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN), a LOCKSS-based dark archive operated by the Public Knowledge Project. The network accepted the journal on 17 September 2026, once the journal held an ISSN and had published at least one article — its two conditions of membership. The journal participates in no other archiving service: not CLOCKSS, not Portico, and it has no agreement with either.
The first deposit — Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026), the whole issue — was initiated on 17 September 2026. On 20 September the locally recorded network state advanced to status 95, deposited: packaged, transferred, received, validated, sent to LOCKSS, and received by LOCKSS. LOCKSS reports the deposit as inProgress. It has not yet reported agreement and no preservation date exists. So independent replication is in progress, but the content is not yet confirmed as preserved. Deposits are made automatically from this point on, as content is published.
Until the network reports the deposit as fully preserved, this page will not describe it as preserved, and the Publisher's own backups — described in the next section — remain the only coverage that is actually in force. The journal states what is in place rather than listing networks it hopes to join as though it had joined them.
What exists now: the Publisher's own backups
Preservation at present rests entirely on backups taken by the Publisher of the two things that constitute the journal — the database, which holds submissions, editorial records, and published metadata, and the file store, which holds manuscripts, galleys, figures, and supplementary files. The arrangement is:
- backups are taken on an automated schedule, not by hand and not on request;
- the backups are held on the same server as the live system. There is no offsite copy yet, so the loss of that machine would destroy the live data and the backups with it. Replication to separate, encrypted storage is an outstanding item, and this page says so until it is done;
- backups are verified by test restoration — the database dump is restored into a scratch schema and compared against the live system, and the file archives are integrity-checked; a backup that has never been restored is not treated as a backup;
- backups contain personal data and are handled under the Privacy Statement, with the same access controls as the live system.
Backups of this kind protect against data corruption, accidental deletion, and operator error. They do not protect against the loss of the machine that holds them, and they do not protect against the Publisher ceasing to operate. They are not equivalent to independent preservation: a copy held on the same server, by the same organization that runs the journal, is a single point of failure. That is why the journal states the position here and tracks completion of the network's processing rather than assuming that enrollment alone proves preservation.
What has to happen before this page can say anything better
Membership of the PKP Preservation Network required an ISSN and at least one published article; both were satisfied on 17 September 2026, the journal was accepted, and the first issue deposit was initiated that day. PKP PN recorded the package as received on 18 September, and LOCKSS received it on 20 September. The articles in the first issue were nevertheless published before any external preservation existed, and the Publisher does not pretend otherwise. What remains is:
- the LOCKSS nodes finish replication and the network reports agreement and a preservation date;
- this page is then updated to give the date from which coverage actually runs.
That second step happens only once the network reports the deposit as preserved — not when a deposit is sent, and not when receipt is acknowledged. Until this page gives a date from which coverage runs, treat the Publisher's own backups as the only preservation in force.
Identifiers and stable links
The journal has no DOI prefix and no Crossref membership, so an article's URL is its identifier. The Publisher therefore commits that article URLs are not changed once published; if the site is ever restructured or moved, the old addresses will redirect to the new ones. Article metadata is exposed for harvesting through the journal's OAI-PMH interface, so third parties can index and mirror the metadata independently of the journal.
Permanence of published content
A published article is not removed, edited in place, or replaced. Errors are handled by publishing a separate, linked correction or retraction notice, leaving the original readable; see Corrections and Retractions. Content is withdrawn from view only where the Publisher is legally obliged to do so or where leaving it available would cause serious harm, and in that case a record remains at the article's address stating that the item was removed, by whom, and why.
If the journal ceases publication
If Peer Academics stops publishing, the Publisher will keep the published content available at its existing addresses for as long as it is able, and will seek to transfer the archive to a preservation service or another publisher able to maintain it. This commitment is recorded here so that authors and libraries can hold the Publisher to it.
What you should do in the meantime
Deposit your accepted manuscript in your institutional or subject repository. That deposit is, at present, the most robust independent copy of your work associated with this journal, and it is permitted immediately and without embargo — see Repository and Self-Archiving. Librarians and funders assessing the journal against a preservation requirement should read this page as it stands and not assume forthcoming enrollment.
Questions about preservation go to support@peeracademics.com.