News

The Fading Memory of Science: ESF joins alliance to preserve science assets of the digital age

The European Science Foundation (ESF) is joining forces with 11 knowledge-based organisations to form an alliance for the establishment of European infrastructure which helps preserving and providing permanent access to digital scientific information. The information is currently stored in formats which are fast becoming obsolete and growing exponentially in volume.

The Alliance for Permanent Access to the Digital Records of Science, has gathered policy-makers, national governments, world-renowned research organisations and digital preservation experts at a strategic conference, chaired by ESF President Professor Ian Halliday, today in Brussels to  address the pressing need to create a viable and sustainable European infrastructure for access to the records of science. The issue could also potentially provide an opportunity to establish a strategic partnership between the Alliance, the European Commission, national governments, research funding and performing organizations, and academics.  The European Alliance for Permanent Access-is the organiser of the conference.

 “Like many other sectors in society science has become completely dependent on digital information,” commented Professor Halliday. “But this dependence also comes with a number of major risks because of the many unresolved challenges in the long-term preservation and access to this information. Therefore the effort of the alliance is essential to the preservation of science knowledge and the ESF has devoted itself to be on forefront of this issue.”

Currently the digital revolution has enabled the analysis of research data, together with their easy storage and retrieval from rapidly growing data collections. However, the digitalisation of research data also makes them vulnerable to loss. Storage devices physically deteriorate and they quickly become obsolete as the data formats change or new technologies emerge.

The Alliance is set to become the driving force to seek an effective long-term solution.  Its vision is to enable the diverse scientific communities such as in the High-Energy Physics, Earth Science and Humanities fields to create information repositories which will form their part of the infrastructure. 

At the same time the Alliance will work with these communities to agree on a set of common standards, in order to make their repositories interoperable.  The repositories will alsobenefit from a number of common resources such R&D activities and a framework offering technical tools. Initially the Alliance will collaborate with three or four well-organised communities. This will generate sufficient momentum for others to follow and will allow for evaluation of the project.

The Alliance was initiated in follow up of a European Conference held during the EU Dutch Presidency in den Hague in November 2004. At this conference a broad consensus was reached that the long term storage of the data, the preservation of their integrity and their accessibility to future generations are a shared responsibility among various stakeholders involved in the processes and that many of the related challenges should be tackled at European level.

Notes to editors:

The European Alliance for Permanent Access

Major European stakeholders in science and scientific information have joined to establish the Alliance for Permanent Access to the Records of Science to develop a coordinated European solution for the problems of permanent access to the digital records of science.

For more information on the Alliance see www.alliancepermanentaccess.eu

The founding members of the alliance are CERN, the European Space Agency, the European Science Foundation, the Science and Technology Facilities Council from the UK, the Max Planck Gesellschaft in Germany, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales from France, the British Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, the National Archives of Sweden and the Joint Information Systems Committee from the UK. The national coalitions for digital preservation from France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have also agreed to be involved in the Alliance.

The Conference Programme

The conference will be chaired by the president of the European Science Foundation, professor Ian Halliday. At the conference the Alliance will present its approach and its vision of a sustainable European infrastructure for permanent access to scientific information. High-level representatives of the European Commission and of major organisations in the fields of research data and scientific publications will give their view on permanent access and the ideas of the Alliance. Furthermore, a representative of the National Science Foundation will elaborate on the latest developments in the field of cyberinfrastructure in the United States. Some 80 high-level representatives from key stakeholders in Europe will participate in this strategic conference.

---

Media contact:

Dr. Alexis-Michel MugabushakaE-Mail