The ICME Journal of Laboratory Medicine is committed to supporting the continued accessibility, integrity, authenticity, and continuity of its published laboratory medicine literature. The journal recognizes that sustainable digital preservation requires operational backup and recovery measures together with an independently managed external preservation arrangement.
ICME Journal of Laboratory Medicine maintains operational safeguards for its website, published article files, pathology dataset metadata, and related records. The journal is working to establish an independently verifiable external preservation arrangement. Until deposits and operational status are confirmed, the journal does not claim active participation in an external long-term preservation network.
The purpose of this policy is to support the continued availability, authenticity, integrity, and usability of published lab medicine articles and associated metadata. Preservation planning reduces the risk of content loss resulting from technical failure, platform migration, cybersecurity incidents, or organizational disruption.
The journal website is developed using PHP, and source code is managed through GitHub. These support version control and technical recovery, but do not constitute independent long-term preservation of published content.
ICME Journal of Laboratory Medicine is working to establish a separately managed external preservation arrangement for published articles. This page will be updated once the arrangement becomes operational and independently verifiable.
ICME Journal of Laboratory Medicine applies technical safeguards to reduce data loss risks and support content recovery. These internal safeguards serve operational needs and are not presented as substitutes for long-term digital preservation networks.
Preservation planning covers the published Version of Record, bibliographic metadata, supplementary datasets, licensing information, and permanent editorial notices (corrections, retractions, Expressions of Concern).
ICME Journal of Laboratory Medicine maintains bibliographic metadata for each article, including title, author names, affiliations, abstract, keywords, publication date, volume, issue, license information, and relevant disclosures.
Authors may archive the submitted, accepted, and published Version of Record in institutional or disciplinary repositories and personal academic webpages, adhering to article licensing terms without a journal embargo.
Authors remain responsible for retaining underlying research and assay data according to ethical, legal, and funder guidelines. Non-sensitive lab data should be deposited in suitable data repositories with a Data Availability Statement.
If ICME Journal of Laboratory Medicine ceases publication, reasonable efforts will be made to preserve its publicly accessible archive, maintain article landing pages, and transfer eligible content and metadata to an independent preservation service or repository.
Permanent availability following discontinuation cannot be guaranteed through operational backups alone. A definitive continuity statement will be published upon operational verification of an external preservation arrangement.
This policy is reviewed periodically. ICME Journal of Laboratory Medicine will claim participation in an external preservation service only after eligible deposits are completed and independently verified.