E-Journal Archiving: A Survey of the Landscape

(a study sponsored by CLIR)

Ann Okerson

ICOLC Meeting

13 October 2006

Digital preservation represents one of the grand challengesfacing higher education. Yet… the responsibility for preservation is diffuse and the responsible parties havebeen slow to identify and invest in the necessary infra-structure. The shift from print to electronic publicationof scholarly journals is occurring at a particularly rapidpace; the digital portion of the scholarly record is in-creasingly at risk and solutions may require unique ar-rangements within the academy for sharing preservationresponsibility.

Adapted from "Urgent Action Needed to Preserve ScholarlyElectronic Journals," Don Waters et al, 10/2005

History & process

Fall 2005: idea emerges at ARL meeting

1/2006: series of conference calls and study commissioned with Anne Kenney & Cornell team

2/2006 - 6/2006, the team:

Conducted interviews with library directors

Did extensive literature and Web searches

Studied the journal e-archiving landscape and chooses 12 representative initiatives

Surveyed the initiatives

Analyzed all information that has been gathered

History & process (2)

Iteration with ARL directors at 5/2006 meeting

Extensive back and forth with stakeholders, interested parties

Recommendations were developed in 6/2006

External readers and editorial review in summer of 2006

Publication date October 2006

Wide promulgation and discussionICOLC

ARL

And more

Contents

Includes: the "who, what, when, where, why, and how" of significant archiving programs operated by not-for-profit organizations in the domain of peer reviewed journal literature published in digital form.

Excludes: preservation efforts covering digitized versions of print journals (i.e., JSTOR), library conversion projects, publisher efforts, and initiatives in planning stages.

The chosen dozen initiatives

Government mandated/funded:CISTI - Csi: 5M articles loaded (Canada's national science library; Canada's scientific infostructure (2003)

KB - e-Depot (Dutch national deposit library): 8 major publishers (2000)

Kopal - DDB: (National Library of Germany & Ministry of Education & Research's project to accept journals under legal deposit arrangement, began 2004)

The chosen dozen (2)

Government mandated/funded (cont'd):NLA-Pandora (Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia): currently lists about 2,000 e-journals, mostly non-commercial (1996)

PubMed Central, National Institutes of Health-National Library of Medicine: about 250 titles with ambitions to become comprehensive (2000)

LANL-RL (Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library, D of E): focus on physical sciences for local use and also serves a group of external clients (1995)

The chosen dozen (3)

Membership/subscription initiatives:LOCKSS Alliance (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe): over 150 participating institutions in 20+ countries (2000)

CLOCKSS (Controlled LOCKSS): 6 libraries and 12 publishers to establish a comprehensive dark archive (2006)

OCLC-ECO: over 5,000 titles from 40 publishers; libraries can select the content (1997)

Portico: membership-based 3rd party "dark archive" service, includes 18 publishers, thousands of titles (2006)

The chosen dozen (4)

Consortial implementations, providing access for library members:

OhioLink Electronic Journal Center: nearly 7,000 journals from 40 publishers, 85+ members

Ontario Scholars Portal: serves 20 university libraries in OCUL; nearly 7,000 journals

Access when?

NOWCISTI

LANL

PANDORA

OCLC

OhioLink

Ontario Scholars Portal

PubMed Central

TRIGGERLOCKSS

CLOCKSS

KB e-Depot (onsite)

Kopal (onsite)

Portico

Seven indicators of viabilityBoth an explicit mission & necessary mandate to perform long-term archiving

Negotiate all rights and responsibilities to carry out its obligations

Identify exactly which titles are covered and for whom

Offer a minimal set of defined services - receive, store, verify integrity, guard against loss, be auditable (certification)

Make information available under clearly stated conditions

Be organizationally sound

Work as part of a network

Content coverage

Difficult to identify which publications are being archived, by whom

Not all publish lists; not all have complete, up to date titles (this is complicated)

Not all of a publishers' titles are necessarily included in a collection (PubMed Central has largest number of publishers but smallest number of titles)

Aggregators such as Muse, etc. add complexity

Content coverage (2)

Participation in the 12:Number of unique publishers is 128

91 participate in only one program

20 participate in 2 programs

17 (major) publishers are in 3 or more programs

Lots of redundancy for STM

Other disciplines, smaller publishers, non-Roman, and dynamic Web publications are less well represented and less likely to have an archiving/preservation program

Minimal servicesThis is the area of the report that:

Is the most lengthy

Is particularly clearly written

Represents the area that we know least about (much technical activity with yet a long way to go to assure perpetual availability)

Represents an area with emerging best practices and standards

Some areas covered: formats for ingestion, what content is included, how to know it's all there, is it corrupted, cost effectiveness, guard against loss/backup, etc.

Access rights

The 12 initiatives all describe quite well for whom and under what condition access is provided

Light archives vs dark archives

Trigger events - publishers cease operations, journal becomes public domain, journal ceases publication, catastrophic failure

Organizational viability

Most appear to have the necessary organizational structure including:

Commitment

Documentation

Adherence to standards

Succession planning

Good business planning, models

Incoming revenue for support

However, mostly a limited track record (very new)

Part of a network

Networks can be formal or informal and provide:

Idea exchange

Sharing of documents

Sharing software

Coordinating content selection

Reciprocal storage, mirroring

Backup if other archives fail

Shared resources, facilities

Some of these initiatives are communicating productively with one or more other initiatives

Conclusions

Trigger events will happen

Libraries cannot do this alone

Current license terms for libraries are mostly inadequate (perpetual access does not equal preservation)

Viable options are emerging

No single archiving program will meet all needs

Coverage is very uneven

Much content is at risk

Libraries can and should influence developments

Legislation needed -- legal deposit

All programs need greater support, transparency, etc.

Recommendations for libraries

Press publishers to enter archiving relationships

Share information about what they are doing and how they are making decisions

Join at least one initiative

Press existing programs to meet their needs

Develop a registry of archived publications

Lobby programs to participate in networks for information sharing, best practices, etc.

Recommendations for publishers

Enter into relationships with one or more e-journal archiving programs

Provide adequate information and data to archivers

Extend liberal archiving rights in their licensing agreements.

Recommendations for e-journal archiving programs

Present evidence of minimal level of services for long-term, well managed collections (open to audit, certified)

Be overt and explicit about what is archived

Assure appropriate property rights

Negotiate with regard to eventual placement in the public domain

Form a network of mutual support and interdependence

CLIR pub 138:

E-Journal Archiving Metes and Bounds: A Survey of the Landscapeby Anne R. Kenney, Richard Entlich, Peter B. Hirtle, Nancy Y. McGovern, and Ellie L. Buckley

September, 2006. 120 pp. $30ISBN 1-932326-26-XISBN 978-1-932326-26-0

<www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub138/pub138.pdf>