Brieflands maintains four independent preservation layers for every open-access article published, so that the published record does not depend on the Brieflands website alone.
- Brieflands Repository — an additional access and storage layer for published content, with redundant controlled backups.
- Portico — independent digital preservation operated by ITHAKA, held outside Brieflands’ own systems.
- PubMed Central — journals formally accepted by PMC deposit their eligible full text and associated files in the PMC archive.
- Koninklijke Bibliotheek — Brieflands has been a registered publisher with the National Library of the Netherlands since 2011, placing its output in the Netherlands’ national deposit framework, a jurisdictionally independent layer alongside Portico.
If Brieflands ceases to operate, or a journal is transferred or discontinued, preserved content is released by Portico under its trigger-event arrangements, and deposited content remains held by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek independently of Brieflands. DOIs continue to resolve, and archived content and bibliographic records remain preserved through the applicable repository, preservation and DOI infrastructure. Full detail is in the Archiving and Digital Preservation Policy. Brieflands will not enter into a change of ownership agreement unless the Board of Trustees accepts these arrangements.
In addition, once an article has been published, we do not allow it to be changed, leading to the following policies.
Article removal:
The preservation of scientific research is a cornerstone of science and as such, we will use our best efforts to ensure that material published by Brieflands is preserved and remains available for access. Therefore, we reserve the right to cease to make available articles, or relevant article content, that it has been advised are potentially defamatory, or that infringes any intellectual property right or are otherwise unlawful. Where this occurs, the article will remain indexed. However, in place of the article or content, an appropriate explanatory note will be attached.