Re: What if open access publishers close down

["James A. Robinson" <jim.robinson@stanford.edu>]

[llicense: If this is too off-topic, someone smack me]

> BioMed Central does what it can to ensure that the material published
> remains openly and freely available in all eventualities. But David is
> right in pointing out that the preservation of science literature has
> always been a library responsibility, not a publisher one.

Which is why I wasn't directing those questions at any specific Open
Access publisher.  I was (and am still) asking the librarians on this
list. :-)

> We are realistic at BioMed Central, and provide for eventualities, but we
> plan for success. What Jim suggests seems to me like planning for failure,
> although I'm sure he doesn't intend it that way.

I do intend it that way, but not as a slight against BioMed Central. I'm
not familier enough with the world of publishing to know whether or not
there are ever sudden massive collapses of a publisher's product. This
RoweCom incident, where money meant for services has gone AWOL, got me to
wondering what the plans are if a publisher goes WorldCom.

There are things which can be done to secure, catalog, and archive hard
copy, and LOCKSS seems to run on a similar conceptual base regarding
electronic copy.  If my reading of LOCKSS is correct, a library which is
worried about a publisher going away, may set up a LOCKSS archive.
Whatever agreement is in place between the library and the publisher
specifies what, if any, copies of the publisher's content may be archived
as a hedge against disaster.

I guess my thinking is associated with thoughts of the Royal Library of
Alexandria. You've got a set of systems sitting in one location, subject
to either natural disaster or being shut down.  Destruction of the site,
if you don't have an archive, means you lose priceless information of
great value.  Copies of individual articles floating all around the
internet aren't nearly as useful as a consolidated archive of everything
the original had.

While any high end operation will have archives of important files, it's
not at all clear to me that such files would be available if a site's
company went out of business.  Who would have the legal authority to go in
and retrieve the archived files?  I've heard of agreements where a
publisher might legally require it's site operator to maintain computer
readable copies of everything which will be available in case the site
operator goes out of business.  I'm not sure if Librarians make similar
demands of publishers. For example, a publisher goes out of business, and
the Library has forked out 100 thousand dollars over 10 years for content.
What happens if the publisher goes out of business, shutting down it's
site?

It strikes me that the best solution is to make copies while they are
available.  With licensed material, you're subject to agreements between
multiple parties.  You probably are not allowed to make an openly
available copy of such a site, or use it as a base for building another
site (hence something like LOCKSS which archives copies and has it's own
access control model).  With Open Access, the license has already been
made, and indicates you may make a fully functional archive of the
original.  Has anyone thought about taking advantage of that? Or is
something like LOCKSS all that is needed?

> open access. By a sustainable model we mean an economic model that is not
> reliant on one subsidy or grant. They can be withdrawn or used up and
> sometimes raise questions of independence and level playing fields. We
> have seen what happened to PubSci. A sustainable model is built on a
> reasonable price for a truly valued and necessary service, paid per
> deliverable unit (an article peer-reviewed and published with open access,
> in our case).

What you seem to be talking about here is sustainable economic revolution.
What I'm talking about is less intellectual. :-)  I'm talking about
disaster scenerio planning.

Jim