Project History

Paper records from ASA’s journals  were retained in an archive at Pennsylvania State University. When Penn State decided to deaccession these records, they were stored in a climate-controlled warehouse by ASA; but they were slowly deteriorating. The choice between letting these files degenerate and creating a new form of Archive was made by the ASA Council. The result was a proposal to the NSF for Creating a Digital Archive for Research on the Production of Scientific Knowledge project, which was funded by NSF in 2015.  The goal of the project was to develop a digital research archive from the paper manuscripts and corresponding reviews submitted to the ASA’s six journals. The first step of this process was to curate the boxes of manuscripts, reviews, and letters to determine the completeness of the paper files for each journal.  The American Sociological Review, (ASR), ASA’s flagship peer-reviewed research journal, contained the most organized files for each year of data, so we began creation of the DA with this journal.