Scienceremains

Scienceremains is a term used in science studies and digital preservation to refer to the residual material that survives disruptions to scientific activity, including data, literature, protocols, instruments, and tacit knowledge. It encompasses both tangible artifacts and digital records that outlast institutions, infrastructures, or eras.

The term combines science and remains, with origins in discussions of knowledge longevity. It is not widely standardized and may appear in varying forms in scholarly literature on preservation and historiography.

It includes published articles, datasets, software, lab notebooks, hardware documentation, standard operating procedures, and oral histories. Distinguishes from "recovery" efforts by focusing on what persists rather than what can be reconstructed.

Preservation strategies emphasize data curation, open access, standardized metadata, format obsolescence planning, emulation, redundant storage, and citizen science archives. Institutions should build resilient repositories and document tacit practices.

Challenges include uneven survival, bias toward easily archived material, and loss of tacit knowledge. Questions arise about authenticity, provenance, and the ethical handling of sensitive information.

Applications include planning for disasters, informing long-term science policy, and guiding historiography. Scienceremains helps scholars and policymakers consider what counts as scientific knowledge and how to sustain it over generations.

See also: data preservation, digital archaeology, science history, open science, disaster resilience.