We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Nwachukwu Egbunike, Head of Pan-Atlantic University Press (PAU Press) and Senior Lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at Pan-Atlantic University in Nigeria, about the changing landscape of scholarly publishing and the growing importance of ensuring that the knowledge being produced today remains accessible in the future. PAU Press is the latest publisher to join CLOCKSS, taking an important step toward ensuring the long-term preservation of its scholarly publications.
Our conversation brought to light some of the challenges facing scholarly publishers in Nigeria and across Africa, while also offering a thoughtful perspective on the opportunities ahead. Dr. Egbunike spoke about the evolution of scholarly publishing in Nigeria, the rapid shift toward digital forms of knowledge production and dissemination, and the responsibility that publishers have not only to produce and share knowledge, but also to ensure that it remains available and accessible for generations to come.
PAU Press was established in 2017 and underwent a significant restructuring in 2022, when it began developing more fully as a university press. Today, the Press publishes scholarly books and journals and is developing new thematic series in areas including communication, computer science and engineering, business management, and other disciplines. Its mission extends beyond publishing research produced within Pan-Atlantic University itself; the Press seeks to contribute to the broader scholarly publishing landscape in Nigeria and across Africa, while also bringing African scholarship to international audiences.
For Dr. Egbunike, the question of preservation is not simply a technical issue or something that belongs at the end of the publishing process. It is something he has experienced personally. As a writer, he remembers the rapid growth of digital publishing in Nigeria in the early 2000s, when online platforms created new opportunities for writers to publish and reach audiences without having to rely on traditional publishing channels. At the time, these platforms seemed to offer an exciting and lasting new way of sharing knowledge and creative work. But, as he later discovered, the fact that something had been published online did not necessarily mean that it would remain available.
Over the years, many of those early online platforms disappeared, and with them disappeared much of the content that had been published on them. For Dr. Egbunike, this was a firsthand lesson in just how vulnerable digital content can be. A publication may be available today, but that does not guarantee that it will still be accessible tomorrow. Websites disappear, publishers close, platforms change their business models, and technologies become obsolete. Without a deliberate preservation strategy, valuable knowledge can simply disappear.
This experience highlights an important distinction between making content available and preserving it. Digital archiving is an important part of the process, but long-term preservation requires a much broader perspective. It means thinking beyond where a file is stored today and considering whether that content will remain accessible, usable, trustworthy, and available to future readers and researchers. For PAU Press, this responsibility is closely connected to the university's broader commitment to research and scholarship, and digital preservation is becoming an increasingly important part of the Press's long-term vision.
The decision to preserve PAU Press content with CLOCKSS also reflects a broader concern about the future of digital knowledge production across Africa. The continent is experiencing rapid growth in digital publishing, while its young and increasingly digitally native population is producing, sharing, and consuming more knowledge online than ever before. For many students and researchers, digital platforms are already the primary environment in which knowledge is created and accessed, making the long-term availability of digital content increasingly important.
At the same time, there are still significant challenges. The digital divide across Africa cannot be understood simply in terms of whether institutions have sufficient financial resources or access to technology. It is also shaped by infrastructure, connectivity, institutional capacity, social and political circumstances, and the long-term sustainability of the platforms on which digital content is published. As more scholarly and cultural knowledge moves into digital environments, these challenges raise an important question: what will happen to that knowledge if the systems supporting it disappear?
Dr. Egbunike points to Nigeria's own history as an example of why this question matters. Periods of political instability, civil war, military rule, and challenges within the educational sector have all had an impact on the country's publishing and knowledge-production ecosystems. As the publishing industry continues to rebuild and strengthen itself, there is an opportunity to make sure that the knowledge being produced today does not become another generation of lost or inaccessible material.
The challenge is not limited to digital publications. There are also books published decades ago that are now out of print, while the publishers that produced them may have closed or no longer have copies available. In some cases, only a small number of physical copies remain. For researchers and students trying to find these works, access can become extremely difficult. Preserving the scholarly record therefore requires us to think beyond the traditional distinction between physical and digital publishing and to consider how knowledge can remain accessible regardless of the format in which it was originally produced.
For Dr. Egbunike, one of the most important lessons is that preservation needs to be considered from the beginning of the publishing process rather than treated as something to address years later. PAU Press is still relatively early in its current phase of development, which makes this an important moment to establish the practices and frameworks that will support its publishing program over the long term. By incorporating preservation into its publishing strategy now, rather than waiting until content is already at risk, the Press can build a stronger foundation for the future.
This perspective also reflects a broader understanding of what university presses represent. Scholarly publishers are not simply producing books and journals; they are helping to document the intellectual, cultural, and social history of their communities. Dr. Egbunike describes publishers as guardians of society's knowledge and culture, a responsibility that extends well beyond producing high-quality publications. It also means ensuring that the knowledge being created has a future.
During our conversation, he reflected on a fundamental principle of publishing: producing a book or journal is only part of the job. Until that work reaches readers, the publishing process is not complete. Preservation takes that idea one step further. A publication should not only reach today's readers; it should have the possibility of reaching readers decades from now, or even a century into the future.
Imagine a researcher in 2126 discovering a book published today and being able to access it. Imagine a student finding the research produced by an earlier generation, or a scholar tracing how ideas developed over decades. Imagine communities being able to look back at their own intellectual and cultural record and know that it has not disappeared simply because the technology or platform on which it was originally published no longer exists.
That is why digital preservation is not simply a technical service. It is part of the responsibility of scholarly communication and an essential component of ensuring that the scholarly record remains available over time.
The experience of PAU Press illustrates why this responsibility is particularly important as African scholarly publishing continues to develop. More research is being produced digitally, more publishers are creating online journals and books, and more scholars are relying on digital platforms to communicate their work. This creates enormous opportunities to expand access to African scholarship and connect researchers with audiences around the world, but it also creates a responsibility to ensure that this growing body of knowledge does not become vulnerable to the disappearance of individual platforms, publishers, or technologies.
The opportunity is enormous, but so is the responsibility.
Preserving Africa's growing scholarly record means thinking beyond today's publication and asking what will happen to it tomorrow, in ten years, or in a hundred years. It means recognizing that preservation is not separate from publishing, but an integral part of it.
For Dr. Egbunike, that recognition is an important first step. For CLOCKSS, conversations like this are an important part of raising awareness across the scholarly publishing community and supporting publishers as they consider the long-term future of the content they create.
PAU Press's decision to preserve its publications with CLOCKSS is one practical example of how publishers can take action today to protect the scholarly record of tomorrow. It is also a reminder that preservation is ultimately about people: the researchers who will rely on today's scholarship, the students who will discover it in the future, and the communities whose intellectual and cultural history is captured in the scholarly record.
Because ultimately, publishing is about more than producing knowledge. It is about making sure that knowledge remains available and that future generations have the opportunity to discover, use, build upon, and learn from it.
You can re-watch the webinar, below: