The shift towards electronic publication of scholarly journals affords advantages to both publishers and consumers. The improvement in accessibility is complemented by more sophisticated ways of searching content and a recent British Library commissioned study concluded that by 2016, half of all serial publications will be published 'online-only' by 2016. What is problematic for the academic community, however, is the challenge of ensuring that information that is served remotely and online is accessible for the long-term, and will remain available for teaching and research purposes for as long as it is deemed useful or interesting.
The JISC Preservation programme has engaged with this issue by funding a number of projects, studies, reports and workshops to support various communities with their efforts to find answers to this problem. A number of service providers have entered the field offering e-journal archiving solutions and it is clear that much work is still required to gain a clear understanding of how these different solutions either replicate or complement each other, and how they exist in relation to publishers and licensing arrangements.
current initiatives ...
The UK LOCKSS Pilot Programme
The e-Journal Registry Feasibility Study
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