How CLOCKSS Works: Ensuring Long-term Access to Digital Content

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

**Apologies for Cross-Posting**

The CLOCKSS initiative is a partnership of libraries and 
publishers committed to ensuring long-term access to scholarly 
work in digital format.  As more and more content moves online, 
there is growing concern that this digital content may not always 
be available. CLOCKSS addresses this problem by creating a 
secure, multi-sited archive of web-published content that can be 
tapped into as necessary to provide ongoing access to researchers 
worldwide *for free*.

There are many ways digital content may become unavailable, 
including when a publisher chooses to retire a journal.  SAGE 
Publications, a CLOCKSS partner, recently announced that it would 
discontinue online access to its journal, "Graft: Organ and Cell 
Transplantation."  This represents an opportunity to demonstrate 
how CLOCKSS responds to a "trigger event."

Building on the recent Pilot project, CLOCKSS publishers will 
feed digital content, including the journal "Graft," into a 
distributed archive housed at seven sites around the globe. 
When content ceases to be available, for whatever reason, and for 
an agreed lapse of time, a "trigger event" is judged by the 
CLOCKSS Board to have occurred. Content stored in the archive is 
released to designated delivery platforms or hosts, ensuring 
unrestricted access to research literature that might otherwise 
have been lost.

The current CLOCKSS Board, established in 2005 to oversee the 
Pilot, includes executives from the world's leading publishers -- 
responsible for about 60% of journal content currently online -- 
and representatives from six leading libraries and OCLC. 
Together they have developed a network of geographically-diverse 
CLOCKSS archive sites.  The sites maintain "CLOCKSS boxes," 
computers with storage to hold and preserve multiple copies of 
content from the participating publishers.  These 
geographically-dispersed copies are under different 
administrative control and are continually and automatically 
audited against one another. These copies remain "dark," hidden 
and unavailable for use, until a trigger event leads the CLOCKSS 
Board to "light up" the content and restore access to it again.

Negotiations are underway to expand the CLOCKSS archive network 
to 12 to 15 libraries.  CLOCKSS is actively recruiting additional 
publishers and libraries to join the initiative.  For information 
on joining CLOCKSS, please visit http://www.clockss.org or 
contact clockss-info@clockss.org.

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 U.S. 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.

For more information about the CLOCKSS initiative, please visit 
http://www.clockss.org or contact clockss-info@clockss.org for 
information.  See also, 
http://www.clockss.org/clockss/News_Archive for background 
information.

Participating Libraries in Pilot: Indiana University, New York 
Public Library, OCLC, Rice University, Stanford University, 
University of Edinburgh, and University of Virginia

Participating Publishers in 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

###

Amy Kohrman
Marketing Manager
LOCKSS/CLOCKSS
Stanford University Libraries
1450 Page Mill Road
Palo Alto, CA  94304
akohrman@stanford.edu