Re: Elsevier and Portico Sign Archive Partnership

[Steve Hitchcock <sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

Tony, I'm sure many will be reassured about plans to preserve the digital 
versions of journals. Since long-term archiving is as much an 
organisational and management issue as a technical issue, I have a few 
questions about the sustainability of the partnership:

1 What are the costs of this arrangement for a) Elsevier b) Portico?

2 What does Portico offer that the arrangement with KB does not?

3 The answer to 2 may influence this - what is the business model for the 
partnership with Portico?

Steve Hitchcock
Preserv Project Manager
IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 3256    Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865
http://preserv.eprints.org/

At 03:05 22/12/2005, you wrote:

> Subject: Elsevier and Portico  Sign Archive Partnership
> Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:05:22 EST
> Reply-To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Sender: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>
> Elsevier has announced that Portico, a nonprofit electronic archiving 
> service, will be an official e-journal archive for the company. The 
> partnership with Portico will ensure that the over 2,100 current and 
> formerly published journals on Elsevier's ScienceDirect service are 
> preserved in a permanent archive for posterity.
>
> Elsevier has long been a leader in the area of permanent e-journal 
> preservation and an advocate of publisher responsibility for digital 
> archiving. In 1996 Elsevier began depositing e-copies of its Dutch 
> imprint journals with the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National 
> Library of the Netherlands. Discussions with the KB continued in 2000 for 
> it to become Elsevier's first official archive, leading to the current 
> agreement to archive all Elsevier ScienceDirect journals.  Since that 
> time, Elsevier has been seeking additional trusted third parties around 
> the world to be official archives and the new agreement with Portico is a 
> major step in this global plan.
>
> "Partnering with Portico was a natural choice in continuing our goal of 
> permanent archiving. Portico's mission and guiding principles are in line 
> with Elsevier's own commitment to preserving the integrity of the 
> scholarly and scientific record," said Karen Hunter, Senior Vice 
> President at Elsevier. "Researchers, librarians and publishers alike 
> recognize the need for digital archives to be protected and preserved for 
> future generations of scholars and researchers. In partnering with 
> Portico, Elsevier is assuring that Elsevier journal titles will be 
> available in perpetuity."
>
> Elsevier's collaboration with Portico coincides with a recent matching 
> grant from the Library of Congress made to Portico.  The three million 
> dollar award from the Library of Congress' National Digital Information 
> Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) will assist Portico in 
> their economic model and technical infrastructure building efforts. The 
> grant from the NDIIPP is part of Library of Congress' efforts to achieve 
> permanent archives of digital materials.
>
> Digital archiving is particularly critical now with the steady increase 
> in electronic scholarly journals and conversion of library subscriptions 
> to electronic-only, which has sparked concern from academics, librarians 
> and publishers about their long-term availability.
>
> "We live in an electronic age that has seen rapid transition to reliance 
> on electronic formats for scholarly works. It is both urgent and 
> important that the community take steps to preserve the scholarship of 
> the past, present and future," said Kevin Guthrie, president of Ithaka 
> and chairman of the JSTOR Board of Trustees.  "In supporting and 
> launching Portico, Ithaka and JSTOR are offering the community a concrete 
> way for publishers to secure their content and for libraries to act on 
> their preservation mandate.  Our partnership with Elsevier ensures that a 
> substantial and essential core of scientific literature will be 
> preserved."
>
> Permanent preservation of journals is a common goal for both libraries 
> and publishers. It is essential to preserve scholarly works.
>
> "Successful preservation of electronic journals depends upon cooperation 
> and collaboration between libraries and publishers," said William Bowen, 
> chairman of the Ithaka Board of Trustees and president of The Andrew W. 
> Mellon Foundation.  "The long-term success of Portico depends on the 
> willingness of publishers like Elsevier to commit to preserving content a 
> well as the willingness of libraries to support the archive's ongoing 
> work. Elsevier's commitment to Portico is a critical step forward in 
> helping to establish a reliable preservation infrastructure for the 
> community."
>
> Portico has been in development for more than three years and is now 
> moving into implementation.  The more than 7 million Elsevier articles 
> will be loaded into Portico beginning in 2006.  Portico is working to 
> build a group of contributing publishers and libraries who will be=20 
> participating in supporting the Portico archive.
>
> Tony McSean
> Director of Library Relations
> Elsevier
> +44 7795 960516
> +44 20 7611 4413