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Preservation: Getting Started [Tiers 2-3]

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As part of JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services, you're able to preserve your content in Portico, an OAIS-compliant digital preservation service that offers comprehensive solutions to safeguard digital content.

Note: Content you choose to preserve will not be discoverable through Portico. For information about making your content discoverable for members of your institution or the general public, please see Publishing items and collections.

Overview

Preservation standards

JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services’ preservation process through Portico adheres to established digital preservation standards, including:

  • Open Archival Information System (OAIS)
  • Preservation Metadata (PREMIS)

For more information, Portico’s preservation policies are available to read on the Portico website.

Preservation process

When you initiate preservation, Portico harvests your project’s metadata and media files from Stewardship into the Portico preservation system. Once processing is complete, the files and metadata are uploaded and preserved in the Portico archive, and copies are created and preserved in Portico’s replicas to ensure redundancy.

Portico re-harvests preserved content automatically once a month. Once you initiate preservation, you do not need to re-initiate in order to preserve additional items that you have added to the project. Additional items and metadata added to your preserved content will be harvested automatically during the monthly updates.

Preserving content

Your content, including your media and metadata, is preserved at the project level. You may find it useful to maintain specific projects for preservation separately from projects with other intended uses.

Note: In order to initiate preservation for a project, you must have at least one JSTOR publishing target in the project. We also recommend mapping the Title, Creator, and Date fields at minimum.

Preservation tab and Start Preservation button in Project Settings

To initiate preservation for a project:

  1. In your project's Project Settings, select the Preservation tab.
  2. Select the Start Preservation button.

Updating preserved content

Portico saves every uploaded version of a media file as a separate instance, rather than overwriting older files. For example, if you replace the media file on an item that has already been preserved, Portico will preserve both the original file and replacement files.

Note: Items deleted from a preserved project will not be deleted from Portico if they have already been preserved.

Preservation best practices

This section provides some recommendations to help you get started with preservation in JSTOR Stewardship.

File preparation

We recommend preserving files in an open, sustainable format such as TIFF, PDF/A, XML, and CSV. For guidance on evaluating file formats for long-term preservation, we recommend reviewing the Library of Congress Sustainability Factors, which provide detailed insights into format suitability.

In addition, since Portico preserves all versions of your content, using clear, versioned filenames (e.g., CollectionGuide_v2_2025-04-25.pdf) will help maintain clarity and context into the future.

Metadata and field mapping

Rich, standardized metadata adds to the long-term value of your preserved content. We recommend you include key details like creator, date, rights, and context, using standards like Dublin Core or MODS wherever possible.

Portico will receive your item metadata whether your publishing target is mapped or not. However, we recommend ensuring the following JSTOR fields in your publishing target are mapped, at minimum:

  • Title
  • Creator
  • Date

Mapping these fields will enable your item metadata to be searchable in the Portico audit site.

Storage allowance

Your preservation storage is tracked separately from your content management storage in JSTOR Stewardship. You can view your storage at any time on the Statistics tab of the Stewardship home page.

Because your preservation storage is not unlimited, and Portico saves each version of a media file uploaded as a separate version, we recommend being strategic about how you allocate space. For example, carefully review and finalize media files before uploading and evaluate the level of quality necessary to meet your preservation goals.

Viewing your preserved content

During your JSTOR Stewardship onboarding, you'll receive access to the Portico audit site. You can use this audit account to view and verify your preserved content in Portico. In general, we recommend reviewing your preserved content annually, to confirm it appears as expected and to help inform your future planning.

See Preservation: Using the Portico audit site for more information.

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