CLOCKSS Works: Ensures Public Access to Triggered Journal, Graft

["Amy Kohrman" <akohrman@stanford.edu>]

**APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING**

Researchers increasingly access journal articles online, but the 
real possibility exists that, due to natural disaster or 
human/computing failure, digital content might not always be 
available. Libraries and publishers have joined forces in an 
initiative called CLOCKSS*, providing leadership and the 
supporting technology, to ensure reliable, long-term access to 
scholarly e-content.

The moment has arrived to see how CLOCKSS works.

As of today, the web-published content of the journal Graft: 
Organ and Cell Transplantation (SAGE Publications) has been 
exported from the CLOCKSS archive, and is now available to the 
world from two CLOCKSS hosting platforms at universities in 
Europe and the US. Released under a Creative Commons license, 
this content is free to researchers, students and the general 
public, without need of any subscription.

CLOCKSS is a trusted and secure dark archive, preserving 
scholarly journal content from the world's leading publishers. 
The CLOCKSS system is based on geographically-dispersed nodes 
located at major research libraries into which e-journal content 
from publishers is routinely ingested. Archived copies remain 
"dark" (hidden, secure and unavailable for use), until a trigger 
event and the CLOCKSS Board votes to "light up" the content and 
restore access to it again via a hosting platform. At present 
there are seven archive nodes and two hosting platforms. These 
numbers are expected to double in order to achieve added security 
from global coverage.

SAGE Publications is one of 11 premier publishers (together 
accounting for about 60% of e-journal content) participating in 
the CLOCKSS Pilot and serving on the CLOCKSS Board. When SAGE 
announced that it was discontinuing Graft, this became the first 
real-world test for the CLOCKSS system and its procedures: the 
CLOCKSS Board, comprising both publishers and library 
organizations, determined that a trigger event had occurred; 
instruction was given for Graft content to be copied from archive 
nodes in the CLOCKSS network to the designated hosting platforms; 
and 18 issues of Graft became available to the world.

Stanford University, where the underlying LOCKSS software was 
developed, and the University of Edinburgh are among the seven 
participants on the library side, acting as stewards for the 
CLOCKSS system. The two universities have also been designated as 
CLOCKSS hosting platforms in order to demonstrate, through the 
release of content, how CLOCKSS works, with EDINA, the UK 
national data centre at Edinburgh, playing that role for Europe, 
and Stanford University Library doing so for the US. Both serve 
as points of worldwide access, free to all, without any prior 
subscription, fee, or registration.

To read Graft, please click here:

http://www.clockss.org/clockss/Graft_Public_Copies

* CLOCKSS is transitioning from a Pilot Program to an 
organization for the long-term, building on the technology and 
findings of LOCKSS (for Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe).

Additional Information about CLOCKSS

Participating Libraries in the CLOCKSS Pilot:

Indiana University, New York Public Library, OCLC, Rice 
University, Stanford University, University of Edinburgh, and 
University of Virginia

Participating Publishers in the CLOCKSS Pilot:

American Chemical Society, American Medical Association, American 
Physiological Society, Elsevier, IOP Publishing, Nature 
Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications, 
Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley-Blackwell

In June 2007 CLOCKSS was the inaugural winner of the Association 
for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Outstanding 
Collaboration Citation, which recognizes and encourages 
collaborative problem-solving efforts in the areas of 
acquisition, access, management, preservation or archiving of 
library materials.  The ALCTS is a division of the American 
Library Association.

The CLOCKSS initiative is funded by participating publishers and 
library organizations, as well as by a grant from the National 
Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program 
(NDIIPP) via the US Library of Congress.  The grant is intended 
to finance CLOCKSS through a mixture of ingest fees from 
publishers and revenue from an endowment raised from voluntary 
contributions over the next five years.  The need to secure 
long-term sustainable funding for CLOCKSS will be one of the key 
strategic issues facing the Board in 2008.

This announcement forms part of the CLOCKSS campaign to engage 
support across the research community and help raise that 
endowment.

************************************************************

For information on joining the CLOCKSS initiative, please visit 
http://www.clockss.org or contact clockss-info (at) clockss (dot) 
org.

January 30, 2008
CLOCKSS
http://www.clockss.org
Stanford University Libraries
Stanford, California USA