Are you are doing enough to protect the digital content you publish?
As leaders in our field, whether we are digital preservation experts, publishers, or libraries, it is the duty of our community to preserve the hard work and knowledge of scholars.
But the world is unpredictable. Unforeseen events, catastrophic accidents, and stewardship gaps can erase access to both traditional and digital publications. Knowledge that takes generations to build can be lost in an instant or erode gradually and out of sight.
Today with a multitude of economic, social, and political crises looming large and the volume of published content soaring, there are more reasons than ever to make sure that your authors’ works are preserved in perpetuity. Large or small, anticipated or unpredicted, incremental or instantaneous -- disruptions are inevitable. The scholarly record is vulnerable, but the damage doesn’t have to be irrevocable.
Content preserved in digital archives can be retrieved intact after disruptions to inform future generations of researchers. Digital preservation requires active management to ensure that content and data are healthy. Digitized content, back-up copies, and content in storage can deteriorate, so third-party platforms hosting publications do not independently offer the same guarantee that a long-term digital preservation archive does.
Working with one organization may not be enough to weather future uncertainties
Best practices recommend that digital assets are preserved in at least three long-term digital preservation archives. Engaging collaboratively with experts from all corners of the scholarly community offering different paths to preservation and archiving provides much greater redundancy and resilience.
We encourage you, as the steward of your authors’ works, to take a fresh look at CLOCKSS, a not-for-profit joint venture between academic publishers and research libraries to ensure the long-term survival of scholarship for the benefit of the greater global research community.
CLOCKSS
300 Supporting Libraries
491 Participating Publishers
53 Countries
12 Global Repository Sites
400,000 E-Books
51 Million Journal Articles
Eight reasons why CLOCKSS stands out among long-term digital preservation archives
Collaborative - Scholarly publishers and research libraries share governance, strategy, policymaking, costs, and skills for community governed and supported CLOCKSS.
Global - Twelve identical repository sites at major research institutions around the world (unique among long-term archives) provide an exceptional level of redundancy, resilience, and sustainability. The succession plan secured by this international network ensures that your authors’ works will endure even if CLOCKSS and/or your organization doesn’t.
Dependable - CLOCKSS holds the highest certification score ever recorded to a preservation service by the Center for Research Libraries. It preserves books, journals and related materials including datasets, images, metadata, software, video and more.
Innovative – The world of research is changing, and so are we – to ensure that the knowledge entrusted to us remains discoverable, retrievable, accessible, and usable across systems and time. CLOCKSS is evolving new features and services.
Evolving - Content and data is retrievable, deliverable, and discoverable across systems and time. CLOCKSS keeps up the technology and tools needed to transfer and use the archived content, ensures that the metadata is healthy, and continually improves by developing new features and services.
Open & Transparent - CLOCKSS is built on highly secure yet open technologies, standards, and protocols, and freely shares information about the technology it uses. A unique feature is that after publications are triggered, they are openly accessible to everyone under Creative Commons licenses.
Good Citizen - CLOCKSS provides a key infrastructure service, participates in industry activities, and contributes to the evolution of scholarly communications.
Affordable - As a not-for-profit community-governed organization, CLOCKSS keeps costs down through collaboration and innovation. To encourage more publishers to participate, CLOCKSS has a special offer for Ingram clients valid until the end of 2022:
• An additional 10% discount off the 2023 annual fees for participating publishers.
• Waived set-up fees (which normally range from $500-$7,500) for publishers delivering content via Ingram’s CoreSource.