[GOAL] Ceased and transferred publications and archiving: best practices and room for improvement

[Heather Morrison]

New post on Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, inspired by gathering data on OA APCs earlier this year - readers are invited to help in the process of figuring out better practices, particularly with regard to copyright and creative commons.

https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/07/05/ceased-and-transferred-publications-and-archiving-best-practices-and-room-for-improvement/


Highlights


In the process of gathering APC data this spring, I noticed some good and some problematic practices with respect to journals that have ceased or transferred publisher.


There is no reason to be concerned about OA journals that do not last forever. Some scholarly journals publish continuously for an extended period of time, decades or even centuries. Others publish for a while and then stop. This is normal. A journal that is published largely due to the work of one or two editors may cease to publish when the editor(s) retire. Research fields evolve; not every specialized journal is needed as a publication venue in perpetuity. Journals transfer from one publisher to another for a variety of reasons. Now that there are over 11,000 fully open access journals (as listed in DOAJ<https://www.doaj.org>), and some open access journals and publishers have been publishing for years or even decades, it is not surprising that some open access journals have ceased to publish new material.


The purpose of this post is to highlight some good practices when journals cease, some situations to avoid, and room for improvement in current practice. In brief, my advice is that when you cease to publish a journal, it is a good practice to continue to list the journal on your website, continue to provide access to content (archived on your website or another such as CLOCKSS, a LOCKKS network, or other archiving services such as national libraries that may be available to you), and link the reader interested in the journal to where the content can be found.


This is an area where even the best practices to date leave some room for improvement. CLOCKSS archiving is a great example of state-of-the-art but CLOCKSS’ statements and practice indicate some common misunderstandings about copyright and Creative Commons licenses. In brief, author copyright and CC licenses and journal-level CC licensing are not compatible. Third parties such as CLOCKSS should not add CC licenses as these are waivers of copyright. CC licenses may be useful tools for archives, however archiving requires archives; the licenses on their own are not sufficient for this purpose.


I have presented some solutions and suggestions to move forward below, and peer review and further suggestions are welcome.


For details and my preliminary list of suggestions, see the blogpost here:

https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2018/07/05/ceased-and-transferred-publications-and-archiving-best-practices-and-room-for-improvement/

Comments are welcome on the blogppost or to this list.

best,


Heather Morrison

Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa

Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa

Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca

https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706

sustainingknowledgecommons.org

poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca
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