[BOAI] Long-term preservation of Open Access Journals secured

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from the DOAJ.  --Peter Suber.]


For immediate release

April 1st, 2009

For more information, contact:
* Lars Björnshauge, 
<mailto:lars.bjornshauge at lub.lu.se>lars.bjornshauge at lub.lu.se 
or Anna-Lena Johansson 
<mailto:anna-lena.johansson at lub.lu.se>anna-lena.johansson at lub.lu.se (for DOAJ)
* Marcel Ras, 
<mailto:marcel.ras at kb.nl>marcel.ras at kb.nl or Els 
van Eijck van Heslinga, 
<mailto:els.vaneijck at kb.nl>els.vaneijck at kb.nl 
(for e-Depot/ KB long term archiving)
* Peter Axelsson, Swedish Library Association, pax at biblioteksforeningen.org

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 – 
<http://www.doaj.org/>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 Björnshauge, 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.
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