Geoff Harder, Erika Pastrana, Michael Seadle, and Alicia Wise
Why the POSI principles are important
First described in a 2015 blog post, the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) offers a set of 16 principles across 3 themes (Governance, Sustainability, Insurance) by which open scholarly infrastructure organisations and initiatives that support the research community can be run and sustained. The current principles can be found online at https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/.
Open infrastructure is important! These are the tools and services that support and enable open science, foster collaboration between researchers, and ensures transparency, reusability, reproducibility, and the long-term availability of our cultural and intellectual heritage.
CLOCKSS Alignment with the POSI principles
CLOCKSS is in alignment with the POSI Principles, and this underscores an ongoing commitment to preserving the scholarly record with trust and integrity. We continuously work to create and maintain a secure, financially stable archive that serves researchers, librarians, publishers, and the broader academic community. We work to ensure the archive, and the community of support around it, is diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
When the CLOCKSS Board first reviewed the principles in Autumn 2023, we were pleasantly surprised at the strong fit. There was strong consensus across library and publishers on the Board that all the principles were comfortable and sensible for CLOCKSS. Since then, the principles themselves have been revised and there is an even stronger fit.
Governance Principles
- Coverage across the scholarly enterprise – our collaborative community and archived content transcend disciplines, geographies, institutions, and stakeholders. We protect content published in 64 countries from authors in 200+ countries. Our archive is distributed across 12 servers hosted at universities around the world. We are dedicated to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility and are increasing our engagement with under-represented groups, regions, and subjects.
- Stakeholder Governed – CLOCKSS is governed by and for our stakeholders. Our Board of Directors has an equal number of librarians and publishers making decisions together about policies, procedures, priorities, and when to trigger content.
- Non-discriminatory participation or membership – we welcome anyone who wishes to ensure our shared cultural and intellectual heritage is preserved for the future. Libraries and publishers worked together to create CLOCKSS, but we hear from authors, funders, readers, and others how important our mission is. Please reach out to us and contribute to making CLOCKSS a better service for the scholarly community.
- Transparent operations – we are an accredited trusted archive, and achieved the highest score ever awarded by the Center for Research Libraries Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC) audit. We also are transparent in our governance and operations, making our bylaws and agreements available online for review.
- Cannot lobby - CLOCKSS does no lobbying and cannot do so as a charity. We agree that it is the research community, not infrastructure organisations, who should collectively drive regulatory change. Our role is to ensure the long-term preservation of and access to the scholarly literature.
- Living will - We have a succession plan which describes how the CLOCKSS archive would be wound down, and how any ongoing assets could be archived and preserved when passed to a successor organisation honoring these same principles. It has been five years since this will was last refreshed and it is currently under review by the Board.
- Formal incentives to fulfil mission & wind-down – As a long-term archive our mission is to preserve and provide access to the scholarly record in perpetuity. It is unlikely that our mission would become unnecessary, but if our services became redundant or inefficient that we can and should wind down the operations and pass the content entrusted to us to others better placed to look after it. Long-term preservation is like a running relay race, and it is important to pass the baton to other team players. We discuss this more in A perpetual motion machine: The preserved digital scholarly record.
Sustainability
- Time-limited funds are used only for time-limited activities – Soft money is no way to fund a long-term archive, and we are proud to have a sustainable business model that generates a small surplus each year to provide a financial buffer. Libraries make voluntary contributions to support our services, and publishers contribute through service fees. Our accounts are publicly accessible via the California Charity Registry.
- Goal to generate surplus – Protecting content in perpetuity means we must remain adaptive, agile, and innovative. To weather economic, social, and technological volatility, we need financial resources beyond our immediate operating costs. We manage our costs carefully to keep prices low and to enable libraries and publishers of all shapes, sizes, and business models to participate.
- Goal to create financial reserves – We have financial reserves to enable us to wind down operations in an orderly way should this be necessary. In recognition that the costs of long-term preservation and access will increase over time, we have a strategy of generating a small surplus each year to provide a financial buffer and to ensure we can cover these costs.
- Mission-consistent revenue generation – CLOCKSS is mission-driven and not for profit. Our strategy, policies, and prices are set by our Board of librarians and publishers. Our accounts are publicly accessible via the California Charity Registry.
- Revenue based on services, not data – Our mission is to protect our shared cultural and intellectual heritage through long-term preservation and access after a trigger event occurs. Our revenue flows from services provided to publishers and contributions by libraries.
Insurance
- Open source – Our archive is built over award-winning LOCKSS opensource digital preservation software developed by Stanford University computer scientists and librarians. The LOCKSS technology regularly checks the validity of stored data and repairs and preserves it for the long term.
- Open data (within constraints of privacy laws) – Our preservation approach ensures that content entrusted to us is resilient to potential technological, economic, environmental, and political threats and human error. Mirror repository sites at 12 major academic institutions around the world guarantee long-term preservation and access. If content that is held in the Archive disappears (or is about to disappear) from the Web, CLOCKSS can “trigger” it for Open Access.
- Available data (within constraints of privacy laws) – Metadata for all the content we archive is publicly discoverable on our website and in the KEEPERS registry for journals. Our triggered content is publicly discoverable and accessible too.
- Patent non-assertion – Our services are built over award-winning opensource software and content is brought out of our archive and made accessible under Open Access licenses. We neither hold nor seek patents.
CLOCKSS is in alignment with the POSI Principles, and as we grow and adapt the POSI principles will continue to guide and shape our mission of long-term preservation and access to knowledge.
