Digital Preservation as a Science

Digital Preservation is a domain within ICT, that is mainly based on empirical knowledge. One way to introduce theoretical fundamentals is to study accumulated experience and best practices, and expose a common framework from them. In this paper, an idea of having metrics as common objective assessment of capabilities of tools, environments and processes is described. The goal is to have DP welldescribed and structured field, where main terms, decisions and processes would be theoretically stated and proven, just like the science does. In order to identify challenges coming with the idea, research questions are stated.