The Academic Preservation Trust engages in strategic research directions for the consortium, primarily focusing on innovative approaches to digital preservation through community engagement and research. A listing of previous deliverables is available. This agenda does not obligate or require APTrust to advance any topics but sets the posture and foundation for research as opportunities arise or are sought after. The APTrust Executive Director is responsible for executing and implementing the Research Agenda.

The agenda aims to define the scope for various research topics from APTrust and its members. To that end, APTrust is committed to the following activities related to research and scholarship: 

• Defining research questions and prioritizing activities related to specific projects.
• Incorporating identified research projects into organizational budget planning 
• Collaborating with individual member institutions on research goals and related activities when they align with APTrust’s research agenda.
• Contributing to regional, national, and international digital preservation communities and fostering, facilitating, and nurturing peer-to-peer collaboration.

Core Research Topics

1. Network Sustainability
   1. Optimizing the impact of APTrust’s services on member institutions.
   2. Sustainable models that APTrust can adopt to ensure continued service.
   3. A model for mutual aid with other digital preservation services.
2. Tool Development
   1. Assessing if DART meets the needs of current members and its limitations within existing member institutions’ workflows.
   2. Cultivating the DART User Group into a semi-independent peer network that can guide community features and enhancements.
   3. Usability testing for APTrust applications.
3. Infrastructure Diversity
   1. Evaluating new generations of cloud storage technology for preservation storage.
   2. Conduct tabletop exercises to shift critical APTrust infrastructure components to alternative providers to increase resiliency.
   3. Exploring secure and integral redundancy in a multi-cloud environment, identifying and mitigating risks.
4. Supporting Community Archives
   1. Reducing barriers to collaboration between libraries and community archives.
   2. Facilitating the preservation of community archives.
   3. Explore authentic and meaningful reciprocation with community archives.

Research Prioritization and Resource Allocation

Each research project should be considered based on the following criteria:

• Alignment with core research topics and current member initiatives.
• Type of project, anticipated scholarly output, and anticipated impact on the community.
• Scope and timeline of the project, resource commitment, and success measurements.

APTrust Governance groups last reviewed this research agenda in May 2025.