Archiving Policy

CREATE: Contemporary Research in Education and Teaching is committed to ensuring the long-term preservation, accessibility, integrity, and availability of all scholarly content published by the journal. The journal recognizes that digital preservation is an essential component of responsible scholarly publishing and research integrity. Accordingly, CREATE maintains an electronic archiving policy designed to protect published content against accidental loss, technological obsolescence, website disruption, or other circumstances that may affect continued access to the journal's scholarly record.

To support long-term preservation and reliable access, CREAT utilizes established digital preservation systems, including the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) and CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) systems, where participation and technical implementation are available. These systems provide distributed preservation mechanisms that allow participating libraries and preservation networks to maintain archival copies of journal content independently of the journal's primary publishing platform.

CREAT preserves the scholarly record of all articles and other eligible published materials through appropriate digital archiving mechanisms. The principal objective of the archiving policy is to ensure that published content remains accessible and recoverable even if the journal's website, publishing platform, or hosting infrastructure becomes temporarily or permanently unavailable.

Digital preservation may include the preservation of article metadata, full-text content, supplementary materials, bibliographic information, persistent identifiers, publication dates, author information, and other essential components necessary to reconstruct and verify the scholarly record.

CREATE utilizes the LOCKSS and CLOCKSS systems as part of its digital preservation strategy. LOCKSS and CLOCKSS are designed to create distributed and geographically separated archival copies of scholarly publications. This distributed approach reduces dependence on a single server, institution, or hosting environment and strengthens the resilience of the journal's digital scholarly record.

Through participation in these preservation systems, participating libraries and preservation networks may create and maintain archival copies of CREAT content for preservation and restoration purposes, subject to the applicable technical, legal, licensing, and access conditions governing the relevant preservation network.

CREATE supports distributed preservation because maintaining multiple archival copies in independent locations provides an additional safeguard against data loss. The journal's preservation strategy is therefore intended to reduce the risks associated with hardware failure, software failure, cybersecurity incidents, accidental deletion, natural disasters, institutional changes, or interruption of the journal's primary hosting service.

Distributed archival copies may be maintained by participating libraries, preservation services, or other recognized digital preservation infrastructures. The preservation of archived content is subject to the policies and technical capabilities of the respective preservation system.

CREATE considers the published version of record to be a permanent component of the journal's scholarly archive. Once an article has been formally published, the journal seeks to preserve its bibliographic and substantive content in accordance with applicable editorial, legal, and preservation requirements.

Where corrections, retractions, expressions of concern, or other post-publication notices are required, such actions will be documented in accordance with the journal's editorial policies. The preservation of the original publication record will not prevent the journal from issuing appropriate notices or updates when necessary to maintain research integrity and transparency.

CREATE aims to preserve essential bibliographic metadata together with the full-text content of published articles. Metadata preservation is important for discovery, citation, indexing, interoperability, and long-term identification of scholarly works.

Where applicable, persistent identifiers such as Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and other standardized identifiers should remain associated with the corresponding publication record. The journal seeks to ensure that persistent identifiers continue to resolve to appropriate and reliable information about the published article.

Digital preservation at CREATE is intended to maintain the integrity and authenticity of the scholarly record. Archived content should remain identifiable as material originally published by the journal, including its publication metadata and version-of-record information.

Preservation activities should not alter the substantive scholarly content of an article without appropriate documentation. Any legitimate post-publication correction, retraction, or editorial notice will be recorded transparently and associated with the relevant publication record.

CREATE is committed to maintaining continued access to its scholarly content in accordance with its open-access and licensing policies. Archived content may be accessed through the journal platform, recognized preservation services, participating libraries, or other authorized archival infrastructures.

Access to archived materials remains subject to applicable copyright, licensing, privacy, and legal requirements. Where the journal publishes content under a Creative Commons license, the rights and conditions specified by that license continue to apply to the preserved material.

CREATE supports the preservation and dissemination of its scholarly publications under the applicable Creative Commons licensing framework. Where articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license, the same licensing terms apply to authorized reuse and redistribution of the preserved content.

The journal recognizes that open licensing facilitates long-term scholarly communication by allowing legally permitted copies of published works to be distributed, preserved, and reused with appropriate attribution and compliance with the applicable license conditions.

If the CREATE website, Open Journal Systems (OJS) installation, institutional hosting service, or other primary publishing infrastructure becomes temporarily unavailable, the journal will make reasonable efforts to restore access to its published content using available backups and digital preservation copies.

If the journal permanently ceases publication or its primary publishing platform can no longer be maintained, preserved copies held by recognized digital preservation services and participating institutions are intended to provide continued access to the historical scholarly record, subject to the policies of those services.

In addition to external preservation systems, CREATE should maintain appropriate operational backups of its journal platform and publication data where technically and institutionally feasible. Such backups may include article files, metadata, databases, configuration information, and other materials necessary for restoration of the journal's publishing environment.

Backup and recovery procedures should be reviewed periodically to reduce the risk of permanent data loss and to support timely restoration following technical failures or other disruptive events.

The journal's editorial and publishing management is responsible for overseeing the implementation of this archiving policy. This responsibility includes monitoring the availability of preservation arrangements, maintaining appropriate relationships with preservation services, and taking reasonable measures to protect the continuity of the journal's scholarly record.

Where preservation services, institutional policies, or technical circumstances change, CREATE will seek appropriate alternatives to ensure that its published content continues to be preserved through reliable digital archiving mechanisms.

All archiving and preservation activities undertaken by CREATE are subject to applicable copyright laws, licensing conditions, privacy requirements, institutional regulations, and agreements with digital preservation providers. Where archival systems require specific permissions from the publisher or rights holders, CREATE will provide such permissions in accordance with the applicable legal and contractual framework.

Content preserved through LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, or other recognized preservation infrastructures may be subject to the access and preservation rules established by those systems. CREATE supports preservation practices that respect the rights of authors, the journal, readers, libraries, preservation institutions, and other relevant stakeholders.

CREATE regards digital preservation as a continuing responsibility rather than a one-time activity. The journal will periodically review its archiving arrangements to ensure that they remain appropriate as digital technologies, preservation standards, publishing platforms, and scholarly communication practices evolve.

The journal is committed to adopting recognized and sustainable preservation practices whenever feasible and to maintaining mechanisms that support the continuity, authenticity, discoverability, and accessibility of its scholarly publications.

CREATE: Contemporary Research in Education and Teaching is committed to preserving its scholarly publications through reliable digital archiving mechanisms, including participation in the LOCKSS and CLOCKSS systems where available and applicable. These arrangements are intended to create distributed archival copies that support long-term preservation, recovery, and continued access to the journal's scholarly record.

All content preserved through authorized archival systems remains subject to the applicable copyright, licensing, and access provisions. CREAT supports the use of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license for applicable publications and recognizes the importance of open, sustainable, and responsible scholarly communication.

Where applicable, the journal's publications are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. Users must provide appropriate attribution, indicate whether changes were made, and distribute adaptations under the same license where required by the CC BY-SA 4.0 terms.

Through this Archiving Policy, CREATE: Contemporary Research in Education and Teaching affirms its commitment to protecting the continuity and integrity of the scholarly record. The journal will continue to develop and maintain appropriate preservation mechanisms to ensure that published research remains discoverable, accessible, verifiable, and available for future generations of researchers, educators, students, and the wider scholarly community.