This research is a collaborative and interdisciplinary endeavor. It involves researchers and students from the legal profession as well as from the archival and library sciences.

The methodology for achieving the objectives of the project will involve an analysis of copyright legislation and case law in light of recommended long-term preservation solutions for each type of digital material contained in an IR in terms of its nature (i.e., document, record, publication or dataset), documentary form, digital format, system structure (e.g., a relational database or a GIS), functionality requirements (especially for artistic outputs), use, and relationships with other digital objects (e.g., identity and integrity metadata); a study of existing published and grey literature on university IRs worldwide; and a case study of a real IR in course of development using action research and, in particular, ethnography and prototyping.