Topicality of Preparing Fully Functional Electronic Archives of Paper-Based Russian Academic Journals

This paper provides a comprehensive review of both international and Russian efforts aimed at digitizing the archives of scientific journals. It analyzes the accessibility of digital archives for Russian journals, focusing specifically on the field of Earth sciences. Despite ongoing digitization efforts, the study reveals a limited depth of available metadata and full texts. The paper outlines potential strategies for the preparation and open access dissemination of metadata and full texts, using two leading Russian Earth sciences journals—Russian Geology and Geophysics and Journal of Mining Institute—as case studies. Special emphasis is placed on the pivotal role of academic libraries in the preparation and curation of these archives.