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NEWS RELEASE Media Contact: Ginny Foley Public Relations Manager Blackwell Publishing, Inc. Tel: +1 781 388 8334 [log in to unmask] LOCKSS LAUNCHES COMMUNITY INITIATIVE TO PRESERVE SCHOLARLY CONTENT Boston Mass, January 23, 2006 - A group of publishers, librarians, and learned societies have launched an initiative employing the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) technology to support a "large dark archive" that serves as a failsafe repository for published scholarly content. The initiative, Controlled LOCKSS (CLOCKSS), aims to provide assurance to the research community that a disaster, which would prevent the delivery of content, will not obstruct access to journal content. CLOCKSS content or the "orphaned content" would only become available after a "trigger" event, such as the material was no longer available from the publisher. In these situations, a joint advisory board, representing societies, publishers and libraries, will begin the process to determine if the content is orphaned and whether it should be made publicly available. The board ensures that content is controlled but that no one person or sector has authority over orphaned digital materials in the system. "Our community needs to ensure that when content becomes orphaned there is a process through which it becomes publicly accessible," said Vicky Reich, Director LOCKSS Program, Stanford University Libraries. "The CLOCKSS project offers an alternative solution to archiving and its strength lies in the fact that it has been founded by publishers and librarians -- and will remain collectively managed." CLOCKSS provides additional functionality to the LOCKSS system, which is widely known in the scholarly communications world as a technology for ensuring the integrity of digital content, and is used as part of preservation strategies for electronic journals to which libraries subscribe. CLOCKSS also differs from LOCKSS in that participating libraries will archive both subscribed and non-subscribed journals, with the ultimate goal of archiving all of the journals of participating publishers. "As more scholars rely upon access to electronic journals, it has become critical to explore ways to ensure long-term availability of journal content," says Karen Wittenborg, University Librarian, University of Virginia. "This collaborative initiative addresses the uncertainty that librarians have confronted in the digital environment and shows promise of offering a real solution for long-term preservation." The initial two-year pilot will include at least five research libraries, and several commercial and society publishers. During this time, publishers and libraries will continue to work closely to collect and analyze data and develop a proposal for a full-scale archiving model. As part of a longer-term strategy to permanently preserve published work, CLOCKSS will report the findings to the wider community and begin the dialogue about a global infrastructure to ensure preservation of all past, present, and future scholarly content. PARTICIPATING MEMBERS Publishers: American Medical Association, American Physiological Society, Blackwell Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications, Springer, Taylor and Francis, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. In addition, Elsevier is participating in all discussions and is sharing in financial support. Libraries: University of Edinburgh, Indiana University, New York Public Library, Rice University, Stanford University, University of Virginia For more information, visit http://www.lockss.org/clockss.