JISC has announced a pilot LOCKSS project to preserve ejournals in the UK. From today's announcement:
The move in recent years towards provision of scholarly journals in electronic form has greatly enhanced the access to and availability of scholarly publications. However the arrangements for preserving long-term access to electronic journals are far from satisfactory. When subscribing to electronic journals, libraries no longer possess a local copy as they did with printed journals. They effectively lease the content of the electronic journals they subscribe to by remotely accessing it on publishers' servers over the computer network. The problem with this common practice is that access to entire back runs of electronic journals could be lost to academic libraries when subscriptions are cancelled or when journals cease publication. The uncertainty of continuing access is a major barrier preventing libraries from moving to electronic-only subscriptions. The recent endorsement of the statement "Urgent Action Needed to Preserve Scholarly Electronic Journals" by organisations such as the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) highlight the concern in the scholarly community over the long-term future of scholarly electronic journals. There is consensus that a solution to the e-journal archiving problem is urgently needed and that a technically and financially sustainable solution requires collaboration between libraries and publishers. Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) is a tool developed at the Stanford University Libraries to to address the issues surrounding e-journal archiving and preservation. Over 80 libraries and 60 publishers world-wide now are work together through the LOCKSS Alliance to preserve persistent access to a wide range of content ranging from commercial subscription content to non-profit open-access e-journals.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/22/2006 08:00:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
