Archiving Electronic Journals: A Developmental Approach

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Archiving Electronic Journals A Developmental
Approach

• Eileen Fenton The JISC/CNI Meeting, July 2004

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Overview

• Preservation in a time of transition
• Organizational context for preservation
• Components of a trusted archive and emerging
  roles
• Overview of the Electronic-Archiving Initiative

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Preservation In Transition

• Libraries serve an important two-fold mission
• They provide the information resources necessary
  for their local community.
• They are the traditional preservers of the
  scholarly record.
• In order to meet the information needs of the
  local community, a library is must hold and
  preserve a local copy - within the confines of an
  extensive, expensive infrastructure.
• Preservation and access are tightly linked.

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Preservation In Transition

• For electronic resources ownership is not
  required in order to meet local information
  needs.
• Ownership, preservation and access are no longer
  linked.
• This shift has enormous implications for the
  preservation of electronic resources.

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Preservation In Transition

• First, there is no longer a natural motivation to
  build an infrastructure to insure the long-term
  preservation of and access to electronic
  resources.
• Second, it is less clear who is responsible for
  fulfilling the preservation role.
• Third, new models technical and organizational
  and new infrastructure are needed.

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The JSTOR Context

• JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a
  mission to help the scholarly community take
  advantage of advances in information
  technologies.
• JSTOR has pursued this mission through the
  creation and maintenance of a trusted digital
  archive of the full back runs of academic
  journals.
• To date JSTOR serves as a trusted digital archive
  of over 400 journals from more than 38
  disciplines.
• Over 15 million pages have been digitized.
• JSTOR is supported by more than 2,000
  participating libraries from 80 countries.

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The JSTOR Context

• JSTORs commitment to serve as an archive is
  format neutral. From the inception of JSTOR the
  inclusion of e-versions of journals was
  anticipated.
• JSTOR launched the Electronic-Archiving
  Initiative, or E-Archive in response to the
  challenge of archiving e-journals.
• JSTOR approaches this challenge with a
  system-wide perspective seeking to reduce costs
  and improve convenience for all participants in
  the scholarly communication cycle.

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The JSTOR Context

• It is clear that archiving electronic resources
  will require a significant investment in the
  development of organizational and technological
  infrastructure.
• Maximum system-wide benefit from the investment
  in this infrastructure will be achieved by
  archiving a broad array of content that extends
  well beyond JSTORs current collections scope and
  mission.
• A new entity is needed. Launching new
  organizations is beyond the scope of JSTORs
  mission.

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Mission

• Ithaka has been founded to accelerate the
  creation, development and success of
  not-for-profit organizations focused on deploying
  new technologies for the benefit of higher
  education
• It brings together
• Financial resources from (initially) three
  foundations (Mellon, Hewlett, Niarchos)
• The experience derived from the creation of
  JSTOR, including a conviction that organizations
  such as JSTOR can contribute enormous value to
  the scholarly community
• Relationships in all sectors and at all levels of
  the higher education community (developed at the
  sponsoring foundations and through JSTOR)

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The Electronic-Archiving Initiative

• The mission of the Electronic-Archiving
  Initiative is to preserve scholarly literature
  published in electronic form and to ensure that
  these materials remain available to future
  generations of scholars, researchers, and
  students.
• E-Archive expects to take responsibility for
  archiving a broad range of scholarly e-journals
  and journal-like resources.
• JSTOR, Ithaka, and The Andrew W. Mellon
  Foundation are together supporting the
  development of E-Archive.

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Components of a Trusted Archive

• Mission
• Mission is critical because it drives resource
  allocation and routine organizational priorities
  and activities.
• Business Model
• Sustainability is key.
• The archive must generate funds adequate to cover
  the work of the archive from sufficiently
  diversified sources.
• Together the community will need to find a way to
  develop and sustain an archiving capacity.
  Libraries and publishers will need to contribute.
  Foundations and government agencies may also
  have a role.

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Components of a Trusted Archive

• Technical Infrastructure
• An infrastructure must be developed which
  supports in a sufficiently redundant way the key
  functions of the archive (ingest, verification,
  storage, delivery, migration)
• Relations with Libraries
• The archive must meet the needs of the library
  community and the scholars they serve.
• Libraries and archives have an opportunity to
  work together to ensure that content is preserved
  in a way that fulfills the needs of scholars.
• Relations with Content Producers
• The archive must secure the rights necessary to
  the archival task and must arrange for timely,
  secure deposit of content.
• Publishers and archives have an opportunity to
  work together to create archivable content.

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E-Archive Approach

• Source File archive E-Archive will seek to
  preserve the source files which comprise
  publishers e-journals.
• This approach captures some content which is not
  presented online (i.e., higher resolution
  graphics).
• This approach makes it very difficult to capture
  certain elements such as dynamic advertisements
  and editorial information.

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E-Archive Areas of Activity

• Define an archival service.
• Develop a business model which ensures the
  short-, mid-, and long-term sustainability of the
  archive.
• Design and build technological infrastructure and
  develop content processing protocols and tools.
• Research the economic impact of electronic
  resources on operations costs for libraries and
  content producers.

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Activities to Date Define an Archival Service

• Engaged libraries in discussions of e-archiving
  needs and challenges.
• Emerging themes
• There is a widespread desire for a trusted
  solution to the e-archiving need. This is true
  for academic libraries of all sizes.
• Regardless of institution size, librarians
  believe it is important for their own institution
  to contribute to the solution of this problem.
• Librarians recognize that e-archiving raises
  complex technical and business issues.
• Librarians are concerned about perpetual access
  to materials that have been bought and paid
  for.

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Activities to Date Define an Archival Service

• Ten publishers are participating in pilot,
  developmental phase.
• Association of Computing Machinery
• American Economic Association
• American Mathematical Society
• American Political Science Association
• Blackwell Publishing
• Ecological Society of America
• National Academy of Sciences
• The Royal Society
• University of Chicago
• John Wiley Sons, Inc.

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Activities to Date Define an Archival Service

• Gathered publishers perspectives on the
  e-archiving challenge.
• Emerging themes
• Establishing a trusted archival arrangement is an
  emerging best practice for leading publishers.
• Multiple archival arrangements are being
  contemplated by some publishers.
• An archive helps scholarly societies to maintain
  flexibility in publishing relationships.
• An archive provides a practical way to fulfill
  the perpetual access clauses found in many
  content licenses.
• An archive eliminates the need for the publisher
  to store older materials indefinitely, thereby
  freeing resources for enhancing current
  publications.

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Activities to Date Define an Archival Service

• Archival Service features
• Archive a publishers full complement of
  scholarly journals. Seek payment from publishers
  for this service.
• Libraries also support the work of the archive
  and in return can access the archive. This
  access is provided in order to allow supporters
  of the archive to see that the content is safely
  held in the archive.
• Access to the archive is in accordance with a
  very JSTOR-like moving wall. The archive also
  provides access as needed to address perpetual
  access concerns.

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Activities to Date Develop Business Model

• Assumptions
• Those parties who benefit from an archive will
  help to pay for it. Libraries and publishers are
  the key beneficiaries.
• A diversified revenue stream is important.
  Ideally the archive will be able to cover its
  costs via contributions from publishers,
  libraries, and possibly foundation and
  governmental sources.
• An archive must provide enough access to its
  materials to enable those who rely on the archive
  to know that the content is safe and well cared
  for. A completely dark archive is not
  satisfactory.
• Activities Working to assess costs and
  establish pricing.

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Activities to Date Technical Infrastructure

• Analyzed and processed sample e-journal source
  file data.
• Created prototype archive production-level
  archive now in development.
• Developed tools for normalization and
  verification of archived content. Developing
  quality control routines and targets.
• Participating in a number of efforts focused on
  related issues
• Digital Library Federation Global File Format
  Registry
• OCLC/RLG Preservation Metadata Framework Work
  Group (PREMIS)
• Harvard/NLM Archival/Interchange DTD Advisory
  Group
• Sponsored development of the JSTOR/Harvard Object
  Validation Environment (JHOVE)

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Activities to Date Research

• Working with Ithakas research unit, completed a
  study investigating the non-subscription costs to
  libraries for print and electronic periodicals.
• www.dlib.org/dlib/january04/01contents.html
• www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub127abst.html
• Working with a consultant to design a similar
  study involving publishers.

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Current Focus

• Finalize business model
• Complete work on production-level archival
  repository
• Secure support from publisher and library
  communities

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The Electronic-Archiving Initiative 

• Eileen Gifford Fenton
• egfenton_at_ithaka.org