Digital Archiving & Repository Policy

The VIMS Journal of Physical Therapy (VIMS-JPT) is committed to ensuring the long-term preservation and accessibility of its content. In line with the  Open Access Journals  requirements, we have established a robust digital archiving policy to guarantee that all published content is permanently available, even in the event of any disruption to the journal’s website or operations.

This policy ensures that all content published in VIMS-JPT remains accessible to the global community of researchers, clinicians, educators, and students. It also aligns standards for long-term preservation, sustainability, and open access.

Open Access Commitment

VIMS-JPT follows an open-access publishing model, meaning all articles published in the journal are freely available to everyone worldwide. We aim to ensure maximum visibility and accessibility of our content to foster knowledge sharing and advance research in physical therapy.

Digital Archiving Practices

To meet the long-term preservation and accessibility goals, VIMS-JPT utilizes recognized digital archiving practices. All content, including articles, metadata, and supplementary materials, is deposited in trusted, long-term preservation repositories. These practices ensure that content remains accessible, even if the journal ceases publication or if technical issues arise.

VIMS-JPT collaborates with reputable third-party archiving services to ensure the preservation and accessibility of all published content:

  • LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe)
  • CLOCKSS (Controlled LOCKSS)
  • Portico

These archiving services ensure that the journal’s content is stored in multiple, geographically distributed locations, guaranteeing the long-term preservation and availability of articles.

Repository Deposit

VIMS-JPT supports and encourages authors to deposit their articles in trusted open-access repositories. We deposit all published articles and metadata into a combination of:

  • Institutional Repositories: Authors are encouraged to submit their final published versions of articles to their respective institution’s open-access repository.

  • Subject-Specific Repositories: Articles are deposited in repositories related to physical therapy and health sciences, such as PubMed Central, ResearchGate, and others.

  • General Open-Access Repositories: VIMS-JPT articles are also deposited in platforms such as Zenodo, OpenAIRE, and arXiv, ensuring that the articles are discoverable across multiple databases and platforms.

Metadata Preservation

In addition to the full-text content, VIMS-JPT ensures that metadata (including article titles, author details, abstracts, keywords, and DOIs) is preserved and made freely available. Metadata is crucial for the discoverability of articles and is stored in a manner that ensures it remains accessible, even if the full text is not.

  • Metadata is also archived by services such as CrossRef and is indexed in various databases, further enhancing the visibility of our content.

File Formats and Access

To ensure content is preserved in a durable format, VIMS-JPT uses widely accepted and industry-standard file formats such as:

  • PDF: For articles and final published content.
  • XML/HTML: For article metadata, enabling interoperability with other platforms and repositories.

These formats are universally accessible and are stored in a way that ensures long-term usability.

Backup and Redundancy

In addition to external archiving services, VIMS-JPT performs regular backups of all content, including articles and metadata, to ensure redundancy and prevent data loss. These backups are stored in secure, geographically diverse locations, ensuring that even in the event of a server failure, the journal's content can be recovered without disruption.

Ethics and Licensing

VIMS-JPT adheres to a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY NC 4.0)  for all published content, ensuring that articles remain free to access, distribute, and reuse with proper attribution. This open-access policy aligns with DOAJ standards for ensuring that content remains freely available for the global academic community, even in cases of journal discontinuation.

Journal Discontinuation

In the unlikely event that VIMS-JPT discontinues publication, all of its content will remain accessible through our archiving partners (LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, Portico), and the journal will take appropriate measures to ensure that the articles remain available via other platforms or repositories, as needed. We will notify readers and authors of any such developments, and content will continue to be accessible even after the journal ceases its operations.

Access to Archived Content

Content stored in third-party archiving services such as LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, and Portico will remain freely accessible to readers, ensuring that the journal’s published research continues to be available for future citation and research. This is part of our commitment to preserving the scholarly value of the articles and ensuring the academic community can continue to reference them.

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs): (If required)

All articles published in VIMS-JPT are assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which guarantees a permanent and reliable link to each article, ensuring that the content can always be identified and accessed. DOIs are registered through CrossRef, which is widely recognized for providing consistent linking and citation management in academic publishing.

Updates and Review

This Digital Archiving & Repository Policy will be reviewed periodically to ensure it aligns with evolving best practices in digital preservation, open-access publishing, and repository standards. Any updates to the policy will be communicated to authors, editors, and stakeholders through the journal’s website.