Navigating the PDF/A standard: a case study of theses in the University of Oxford’s institutional repository

Abstract

The PDF/A (Portable Document Format–Archival) was established by the International Organization of Standardization as the ISO 19005 standard for long-term preservation of electronic documents. While the ISO requirements of a well-formed PDF/A ensure sustainability and easy recovery of content, the standard restricts some document features from being incorporated into a well-formed PDF/A. Non-conformances to the standard are found across electronic theses and dissertations, from non-Latin glyphs used in scientific and language papers to embedded content, such as images. A further complication for achieving ISO 19005 compliance is that, despite non-conformance to the ISO standard, validation tools do not always catch non-conformance errors in documents which claim to conform to PDF/A. While PDF/A is a logical solution for long-term preservation of electronic documents, the stringent standard prevents some content which is frequently used in academic research from conforming to the ISO 19005 standard. This thesis evaluates the PDF/A and its potential use as a preservation file format for electronic theses and dissertations.