News Release

Springer helps launch CLOCKSS archive

Agreement supports sustainable digital preservation for future generations

Business Announcement

Springer

The CLOCKSS archive allows research libraries and scholarly publishers, who launched CLOCKSS as a pilot program, to preserve and store its electronic content. Once ingested, the econtent is kept safe and secure in a dark archive until it is triggered and the CLOCKSS Board determines that the content should be copied from the archive and made freely available to all, regardless of prior subscription. Due to the success of the pilot program, the founding members unanimously agreed to incorporate and invite others to participate in CLOCKSS.

Participating CLOCKSS libraries and publishers govern the archive themselves via three tiers of governance – an executive board, a board of directors, and an advisory council. Research libraries working alongside publishers like Springer are able to help shape policy and practice in their communities.

"In a great show of confidence, Springer has joined the CLOCKSS initiatives, putting its complete trust in an archive they helped build," says Gordon Tibbitts, Co-Chair of CLOCKSS. "Springer is helping to shoulder the responsibility, alongside its publishing peers and research library customers, of keeping their scholarly assets safe and protected for future generations of scholars."

"As a leading publisher in the STM sector, Springer continues to be innovative by fully supporting initiatives to preserve these digital assets and protect them for future generations," said Heather Ruland Staines, Global eProduct Manager SpringerLink and member of the CLOCKSS Board of Directors. "Our library partners feel quite strongly that the decision by the CLOCKSS founders to make triggered content available to all for free will help further the work of researchers."

In addition to storing Springer's journal content with CLOCKSS, the publisher has submitted a proposal to the CLOCKSS Board outlining a pilot project to test the feasibility and legal issues surrounding preservation of eBook content. Because eBook contracts differ from journal contracts, Springer can only deposit eBook files when its authors' rights are protected.

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CLOCKSS (www.clockss.org) is a joint venture between the world's leading scholarly publishers and research libraries. Its mission is to build a sustainable, geographically distributed dark archive with which to ensure the long-term survival of Web-based scholarly publications for the benefit of the greater global research community. Governing Libraries include the Australian National University, EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, Indiana University, New York Public Library, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Rice University, Stanford University, the University of Alberta, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Virginia. Governing Publishers include the American Medical Association, the American Physiological Society, bepress, Elsevier, IOP Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications, Springer, Taylor & Francis and Wiley-Blackwell.

Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) is one of the world's leading suppliers of scientific and specialist literature. It is the second-largest publisher of journals in the science, technology, and medicine (STM) sector, the largest publisher of STM books and the largest business-to-business publisher in the German-language area. The group publishes over 1,700 journals and more than 5,500 new books a year, as well as the largest STM eBook collection worldwide. Springer has operations in about 20 countries in Europe, the USA, and Asia, and some 5,000 employees. In 2007, it generated annual sales of around EUR 906 million.


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