Finding out about the preservation of e-journals: an overview of the PEPRS project

Fred Guy,

EDINA, University of Edinburgh

UKSG Conference 2011,

4th – 6th April 2011,

Harrogate, Yorkshire

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sinclairlibrary/769777273/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Computer room in London School of Economics 1981http://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/4401344940/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Online availability of journals by discipline

82.6%92.7% 96.1%

0.0%

20.0%

40.0%

60.0%

80.0%

100.0%

120.0%

2003 2005 2008

Arts, Humanitiesand SocialSciences

Science,Technology andMedicine

Average percentage of titles online by publisher size

80.0%

85.0%

90.0%

95.0%

100.0%

105.0%

SMALL MEDIUM LARGE

2005

2008

Downloads of SHEDL content in Scottish universities

0200000

400000600000800000

10000001200000

2007 2008 2009

RIN. E-only scholarly journals: overcoming the barriers. November 2010.

Downloads in UK universities and colleges

0

20,000,000

40,000,000

60,000,000

80,000,000

100,000,000

120,000,000

2005-06 2006-07 2007-08

Statistics related to e-journals

23%3

Print – key aspects

• Once purchased is owned by the library and can be retained, transferred to remote store or disposed of when library determines this

• Library can check if other libraries hold the material and it can be consulted on the premises or be available via Inter-Library loan

• Likely that it will be available in a national library via legal deposit legislation (goes back to 17th century in UK)

E-journals: key aspects

• Libraries are licensed for usage – do not host the material

• Control lies with the publisher rather than with the subscriber

• Publishers are not a constant in the life of a journal– titles are often transferred between publishers

• Publishers may decide that they do not want to host back material

• Legislation for legal deposit is not yet in place in UK and many other countries

7

Why a Preservation Registry?

• Many schemes emerging to meet challenge

• But who is doing what? – How can libraries & policy-makers assess which e-

journals are being archived, by what methods, and under what terms of access?

• JISC commissioned a scoping study for an e-journals preservation registry– the idea had been mentioned in the literature

Scoping Study for a Registry

9

Scoping Study Report Precedes PEPRS

• Rightscom / Loughborough University, 2007

– Confirmed expressed need among libraries and policy makers

– Warned of potential burden on digital preservation agencies

– Recommended: * an e-journals preservation registry should be built* UK Union Catalogue of Serials (SUNCAT)

or SHERPA (Open Access) get involved – SUNCAT is hosted and managed at EDINA

PROJECT DETAILS

• Phase 1 funded by JISC (Preservation Programme) from August 2008 – July 2010

• EDINA, University of Edinburgh, grant recipient

• Project partner – ISSN International Centre, Paris

• Evaluation carried out by Charles Beagrie Limited for the JISC in February 2010

11

Digital Preservation Agencies in the Pilot* Two 3rd Party Organisations

– CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe)

– Portico* Two National Libraries (c.f. legal deposit)

– British Library (BL)British Library e-Journal Digital Archive

– Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB e-Depot) KB, National Library of the Netherlands

* One library cooperative

– UK LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) Alliance

The Agencies - LOCKSS

• LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), based at Stanford University Libraries, is an international community initiative that provides libraries with digital preservation tools and support so that they can easily and inexpensively collect and preserve their own copies of authorized e-content.

The Agencies - CLOCKSS

• CLOCKSS (Controlled LOCKSS) is a not for profit joint venture between the world’s leading scholarly publishers and research libraries whose 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.

The Agencies - Portico

• Portico provides libraries and publishers with a reliable, cost-effective solution to one of the most critical challenges facing the scholarly community today—ensuring that the electronic resources you rely on everyday will be accessible to future researchers, scholars, and students.

The Agencies – e-Depot

• The e-Depot is a digital archiving environment that ensures long-term access to digital objects.

• e-Depot is based at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague

The Agencies – British Library

• The BL preserves digital content that is collected but also material that is created, such as digitised collections. The store is an important component for forthcoming e-Legal Deposit.

What is in the vaults?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wka/4283285201/http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcfull/421644442/sizes/s/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/akeeh/4300472592/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Agencymetadata

Agency metadata

Agencymetadata

Agencymetadata

Agencymetadata

PEPRS

Creating the PEPRS database

Agency data

ISSN Register

ISSNs

PEPRS

ISSN-L + p-ISSN & e-ISSN

Register metadata

Agency metadata

Open Source components used in PEPRS

Component Software choice Comment

User interface Apache::ASP http://www.apache-asp.org/

Offers fast and easy development and is extremely flexible

Database: metadata hosted by PEPRS

Zebra http://www.indexdata.dk/zebra/

Provides structured text indexing and retrieval. Fast and scales well. Provides powerful and flexible text retrieval capabilities.

Harvester Custom Perl and CPAN packages Data files will be collected using FTP and HTTP.

Normalisation Custom Perl and CPAN packages including MARC::Record http://search.cpan.org/~gmcharlt/MARC-Record-2.0.2/

Each preservation agency supplies custom data at the moment, so scripts will be created for each data source. ISSN data is in MARC21 format and will be processed using MARC::Record CPAN package

Z39.50 support in Perl ZOOM http://zoom.z3950.org/api/ Abstract Perl API supporting search and retrieval. Based on YAZ toolkit.

Beta service demonstration

• Beta service

PEPRS Phase 2

• Funding provided from August 2010 – July 2012

• Beta service – end of April 2011 www.peprs.org/

• Full service –2012

• Involve international users in testing

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Forthcoming functionality in 2011

• Browsing

• Advanced searching features

• Machine to machine (for comparison work) and for OpenURL operations

PEPRS Phase 2: key stages

Activity Aug-10

Dec-10

Apr-11 Aug-11 Dec-11 Apr-12 Aug-12

Set up team of testers

User testing and feedback

Beta service - preparation

Beta service - operation

Beta service – additional functionality

Full service ?

Advisory group on governance

Governance in operation

ISSN issues

• ISSNs missing in some agency records and some not in ISSN Register

• Some duplicate records

• Some p-ISSNs used as e-ISSNs

• Some p-ISSNs linked via a common ISSN-L to a number of e-ISSNs but which one is correct?

• Some were incorrect

Holdings information - variation

e-Depot: Preserved: v. 1 - 36, 38 - 46.

UK LOCKSS Alliance: Preserved: v. 42 - 45. In progress: v. 46, 47.

Portico: Preserved: (2002-2009) v.40, v.41, v.42, v.43, v.44, v.45, v.46, v.47.

Terms used by preservation agencies CLOCKSS LOCKSS e-Depot Portico BL No action: The agency has no relationship with this title at present. (or is it best simply not to mention your agency with regard to this title?)

√ √ √

Committed: the publisher has agreed that the agency may preserve the title but the ingest process has not yet begun.

√ √ √ (with qualifications)

Queued: Publisher technical work is complete, but the preservation agency has not yet processed the title

√ √ (use term with different meaning)

Archived: The title has been ingested into the archive

√ √ √ √

Available for Library Archiving: The title has been made available for preservation by a library, subject to a library’s subscription rights.

√

Involvement with international initiatives

• Print Archives Program of the Center for Research Libraries – “CRL is working with consortial partners to plan a prototype print archives framework to link existing print archiving efforts. has developed a searchable Print Archives Registry of information about print-archiving initiatives, including:

– Projects

– Serial Holdings.

• HATHITrust – “….is committed to preserving the intellectual content and in many cases the exact appearance and layout of materials digitized for deposit. HathiTrust stores and preserves metadata detailing the sequence of files for the digital object”.

PEPRS: Further information and Contact details

Project website

http://edina.ac.uk/projects/peprs/index.html

Beta service – to be available by 29th April

http://www.peprs.org/

Fred Guy, EDINA, University of Edinburgh

f.guy@ed.ac.uk