this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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ArchiveBox or similar for shared archiving of research project (lemmy.ml)
submitted 6 days ago by Stopwatch1986@lemmy.ml to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I am one of a network of academic researchers from around the world working on collecting media market data. One problem is that referenced sources often disappear which makes validation later difficult or impossible. So, I thought I would recommend self-hosting something like archive.org that would allow affiliated researchers to submit their web references and have their sources efficiently archived in a central project repository. That would allow validation and continuity for when web-hosted text and files disappear or researchers leave.

I have been looking at ArchiveBox. If you have experience of this or a similar solution, would that fit the bill? The important thing is efficiency for researchers submitting/retrieving pages and files, and openness in structure and formats so that the archive would remain useful if ArchiveBox or similar disappears. FOSS of course means you can't be locked out anyway.

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[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I use ArchiveBox occasionally to archive websites into a browsable, offline copy, regardless of the data disappearing online, and independently of whether or not ArchiveBox is in operation after the archiving finishes, if of course you persist the data locally. I've archived several self-hosted sites because they contained data I would like to conserve for personal use at a later date. It does it quite thoroughly, tho obviously large sites would take a little time to ingest. It might be worth spinning up a Docker instance and run it through it's paces to see if it would fit your criteria.

[–] Stopwatch1986@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I wonder if an authorised remote user (ie an affiliated researcher) can easily instruct ArchiveBox to store a URL and later retrieve it. Also, ideally a random user should be able to retrieve the archived web page or file (eg a PDF, CSV etc). The idea is that authorised researchers can get URLs archived, and then any user reading our reports can click on a citation and get our archived source if the original is not available any more. I'll need to run it and see, but it looks promising.

Keeping the archive alive for years later, possibly after funding dries up, is another challenge but there are public repositories that may be suitable for that.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I wonder if an authorised remote user (ie an affiliated researcher) can easily instruct ArchiveBox to store a URL and later retrieve it

Once you download the data and persist it on local storage, it's available to whomever has access to that drive or server.

Also, ideally a random user should be able to retrieve the archived web page or file (eg a PDF, CSV etc).

For rando access, you could put the data on a public ftp server, or even get fancier with html styled pages. If I understand you correctly, you want a random user to be reading your report that has citations, so that when a rando user clicks the citation, they are presented with whatever you downloaded with ArchiveBox. Kind of Wikipedia style. Speaking of which, a wiki framework might be just the ticket you are looking for.

Download the data, integrate it in to a selfhosted wiki, and it would be available to rando users. Of course your wiki server will have to have all the accoutrements of security so you don't get hacked by a bazillion bots.

[–] Stopwatch1986@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

A wiki is a good idea. Putting a Singlefile or similar all-in-one file in a repository and provide index numbers organised as a look-up table would also work for easy retrieval by a random research user. Both require some admin and more effort from the researchers.

I wish there was a hostable version of archive.is for near-zero maintenance. You just submit a URL over the internet and the web page is cached once along with a screenshot. Then, anyone can access the archived version. This can be done already with archive.is but we have no control over its future, which is critical for long-term dependable archiving.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This can be done already with archive.is but we have no control

Did a little digging this morning. I honestly can't find a selfhosted, archive.is alternative. All the solutions I came up with are either paid for and online use only, or free, but still online use only.

[–] Stopwatch1986@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for doingthe digging. An archivist may know something more. Or the archive.is people.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

It might be worthwhile to run your scenario by the folks at https://lemmy.world/c/datahoarder