Long-term preservation of Open Access Journals secured

[Anna-Lena Johansson <Anna-Lena.Johansson@lub.lu.se>]

For immediate release
April 1st, 2009

For more information, contact:
Lars Bjornshauge, lars.bjornshauge@lub.lu.se
or Anna-Lena Johansson, anna-lena.johansson@lub.lu.se

Long-term preservation of Open Access Journals secured

The Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ) - Lund University 
Libraries and the e-Depot of the National Library of the 
Netherlands (KB) today announced the start of a cooperation in 
order to secure long-term preservation of open access journals. 
The Swedish Library Association is generously acting as sponsor.

Long-term preservation of scholarly publications is of major 
importance for the research community. New formats of scholarly 
publications, new business models and new ways of dissemination 
are constantly being developed. To secure permanent access to 
scientific output for the future, focussed on the preservation of 
articles published in open access journals, a cooperation between 
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ - www.doaj.org) developed 
and operated by Lund University Libraries and the e-Depot of the 
National Library of the Netherlands (www.kb.nl/e-Depot) has been 
initiated.

The composition of the DOAJ collection (currently 4000 journals) 
is characterized by a very large number of publishers (2.000+), 
each publishing a very small number of journals on different 
platforms, in different formats and in more than 50 different 
languages. Many of these publishers are - with a number of 
exceptions - fragile when it comes to financial, technical and 
administrative sustainability.

At present DOAJ and KB carry out a pilot project aimed at setting 
up a workflow for processing open access journals listed with 
DOAJ. In the pilot a limited number of open access journals will 
be subject to long term preservation. These activities will be 
scaled up shortly and long term archiving of the journals listed 
in the DOAJ at KB's e-Depot will become an integral part of the 
service provided by the DOAJ.

Directory of Open Access Journals

Directory of Open Access Journals is developed and maintained by 
Lund University Libraries, Head Office since 2003. The service 
aims to give users a one-stop-shop to quality controlled, 
scientific open access journals in full text. DOAJ is the 
authoritative source for open access journals with over 8 million 
monthly hits, up to 4000 journals published in almost 100 
countries.

"We are very proud of engaging in these activities, that will add 
more value to Open Access journals and we appreciate a lot the 
cooperativeness of the National Library of the Netherlands with 
regard to the e-Depot, the most experienced and qualified partner 
we imagine in this regard" says Lars Bjornshauge, Director of 
Libraries at Lund University, Sweden, "and of course we are very 
thankful that the Swedish Library Association graciously has 
decided to fund these activities".


The e-Depot

The e-Depot of the National Library of the Netherlands is a 
digital archiving environment that ensures long-term access to 
digital objects which would otherwise be threatened by rapidly 
evolving software and hardware platforms as well as media decay.

It is the dedicated archiving environment for the KB's national 
electronic deposit collection. In addition, it will include the 
Dutch web archive and digitised master images. In line with the 
international nature of information provision, the KB has 
extended its e-Depot services to international publishers 
worldwide (now 12 million objects). The e-Depot is supported by 
sustained research and development efforts geared towards 
maintaining the integrity of stored digital objects. "The content 
of the DOAJ collection contains many new, specific aspects to 
overcome. We are sure that we can rise to the challenge, working 
together for the benefit of present and future generations", says 
Marcel Ras, Manager e-Depot.

The Swedish Library Association

"The Swedish Library Association is very happy to support this 
project. This is a very specific manifestation of the 
Association's engagement in supporting long term access to 
publicly funded research publications", says Britta Lejon, 
chairman of the Swedish Library Association.

The Association works actively for an implementation of a 
national policy for libraries and library services in Sweden. In 
its program for a national policy the Association has among other 
policy areas included intensified activities in securing Open 
Access to research publications.