The Academic Preservation Trust has published its 2026-2028 strategic plan, a three-year roadmap that will guide APTrust's technology development, financial stewardship, community engagement, and operational priorities. The plan reflects more than a year of preparation, including community surveys, member meetings, and consultations with APTrust's Advisory Committee and Governing Board. Draft versions of the plan informed APTrust's 2026 technical roadmap, and the goals and objectives will shape individual staff goals as APTrust continues to build the staffing and systems capacity that its members rely on.

A Three-Year Horizon

Previous APTrust strategic plans covered five-year periods. This cycle shortens that window to three years, a deliberate choice that prioritizes adaptability in the face of increased uncertainty across academic institutions, the broader digital preservation ecosystem, and the technology landscape. A more focused horizon allows APTrust to set ambitious but realistic goals while retaining the flexibility to respond as conditions evolve. Annual technical roadmaps will continue to translate strategic direction into concrete implementation priorities.

Updated Mission and Vision

The 2026-2028 plan introduces revised mission and vision statements that more precisely reflect APTrust's work and aspirations. APTrust's mission is to preserve and secure diverse digital scholarly and cultural content for member institutions, enabling sustainable management and long-term access through collaborative and trusted, community-built infrastructure. The accompanying vision articulates a future where APTrust's stewardship encompasses petabytes of scholarly and digital cultural content, forming a trusted network that safeguards collective memory and supports knowledge creation for society.

Affirming Shared Values

The plan formally affirms APTrust's commitment to the Digital Preservation Services Collaborative's Declaration of Shared Values, a document collaboratively developed and maintained by an informal affinity group of community-based digital preservation service providers. The values, including collaboration, affordability and sustainability, inclusiveness, technological diversity, openness and transparency, accountability, stewardship continuity, advocacy, and empowerment, are not new to APTrust's practice. Articulating them explicitly in the strategic plan connects APTrust's operational commitments to a broader community framework and signals to members and partners that these principles guide decisions at every level.

Five Goals for 2026-2028

The plan is organized around five strategic goals, each with supporting objectives and implementation priorities:

Goal 1 focuses on enhancing APTrust's technology infrastructure to improve member experience, data access, and operational efficiency. Key priorities include advanced search and reporting capabilities, automated and reliable infrastructure operations, and clearer communication of service status and support pathways.

Goal 2 addresses storage customization and flexibility, enabling members to manage where and how their content is stored in alignment with their individual risk-mitigation strategies. This includes developing capabilities for in-place content migration and expanding APTrust's storage infrastructure beyond its current provider.

Goal 3 strengthens security and organizational resilience, with a particular focus on supporting the deposit and management of sensitive academic content. The goal encompasses progress toward industry security standards, updated disaster planning frameworks, and modernized identity and access management for members and staff.

Goal 4 ensures long-term financial sustainability through transparent governance, diversified revenue, and clearer reporting on the financial and environmental costs of preservation services. Planned activities include a public sunset playbook, an interactive cost calculator for the APTrust website (already completed), and a pilot consortial membership category.

Goal 5 expands APTrust's community leadership role through knowledge sharing, collaborative advocacy, and preservation readiness initiatives. Building on the momentum from the iPRES 2025 workshop, APTrust will work with peer organizations to sustain community dialogue on cloud-based preservation, co-develop advocacy resources, and contribute to digital preservation-readiness curricula.

The full strategic plan is available on the APTrust website.

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