For Publishers

The preservation of published electronic materials was the original animating use case for LOCKSS and remains a core commitment of the LOCKSS Program.

LOCKSS enables the preservation of increasingly diverse content made available by a wide range of publishers. If you are looking for a preservation solution for your published content, please consider which of the following options is the best match for your preservation needs, available resources, business model, publishing platform, and content focus.

Global LOCKSS Network

The Global LOCKSS Network provides post-cancellation and perpetual access for eligible web-harvestable open access and subscription publications to participating libraries. Publishers are welcome to contact us for potential inclusion in the Global LOCKSS Network. In your request, please include the publisher name, publication titles, ISSNs or ISBNs, first issue dates, where indexed, and publishing platform (if known).

Determinations about publisher content to be included in the Global LOCKSS Network are informed by the needs of the library community that the LOCKSS Program serves, the preservation status of the content, the archivability of the content, and other factors. If accepted for inclusion, there is no publisher fee for participation.

CLOCKSS

CLOCKSS is a dark archive preserving open access and subscription publications, supplementary materials, and an expanding scope of content supporting the scholarly communications infrastructure. Publishers are welcome to contact CLOCKSS for potential inclusion. Fees vary, depending on the volume and size of content and whether your content requires additional custom tooling to ingest.

Open access preservation options

Every day, open access publishers contact the LOCKSS Program requesting preservation services. Publisher participation in the Global LOCKSS Network is free and thus is an attractive option for small organizations. Unfortunately, at the moment, we are accepting very few open access publishers into the Global LOCKSS Network.

The Global LOCKSS Network accepts for preservation content of interest to most of our participating libraries. Librarians prioritize expending preservation resources to ensure post-cancellation access to restricted-access subscription content. The continued accessibility of open access content is meanwhile taken for granted. It is a conundrum; the expensive subscription content whose preservation is in most demand is exactly the content with the lowest risk of disappearing.

In view of these realities, we recommend that each nation or region assume responsibility for preserving locally-published open access content. Brazil’s Cariniana program is a successful example of this approach. Please contact us if you think this may be viable for your national or regional context. We may be able to connect you with other interested parties and communities that have already undertaken such initiatives.

Other LOCKSS-based preservation options for open access publishers to consider include:

Technical Guidance

The vast majority of lifecycle costs associated with preservation are incurred at the time of content ingest (PDF). To minimize your costs, please contact us to determine which ingest method is appropriate for your content, and then follow the appropriate guidelines:

Model contractual language

Subscription publishers often request sample language to include in their contracts with libraries. The following model language may be adapted for this purpose:

ARCHIVING: [Publisher] acknowledges that [Authorized Institution] may use LOCKSS to archive publications. [Authorized Institution] may perpetually use LOCKSS to archive and restore archived content, so long as the [Authorized Institution]'s use is otherwise consistent with these guidelines. To benefit from this support, [Authorized Institution] must be a LOCKSS Alliance Member (see www.lockss.org/join-lockss for more information).