Study on the economic and technical evolution of the scientific ...

in the preceding 12 months (US$ 0.25 per
download in 2005); Springer 132 : fee negotiated
per title per year; Proquest : a one-time fee;
Wiley 134 , Blackwell Publishing 135 , Project
Euclid 136 : unspecified);
• and/or a copy of the subscribed materials,
generally on CD-ROM, that can be mounted
locally, and must sometimes be paid for.
This is strictly a preservation provision, as
the files are usually image files, not searchable
as such, that would require from the
recipients to set up the infrastructure with
effective search and retrieval capabilities.
Moreover, the files may not contain all links
and other features and functionality associated
with the online version available via the
publisher’s server. And eventually, as electronic
content continues to grow, the quantity of
CD-ROMs will become prohibitive and make
this provision unsustainable 137 .
The situation is more complex when access to
journals is provided through aggregators, some
of them creating electronic archives for permanent
access (e.g. OCLC Electronic Collections Online 138 ),
others referring to each journal publisher’s
policy (e.g. Ovid 139 , HighWirePress 140 ).
Given the heterogeneity of the provisions,
libraries cannot manage, nor guarantee,
permanent access to formerly-subscribed
electronic journals, as they did for print journals.
In an attempt to harmonise the situation, some
associations or joint working parties regrouping
representatives of publishers, universities
and/or subscription agents, have established
“model licences” for electronic journals 141 . Such
model licences help to promote best practice
regarding permanent access and preservation
terms in contracts. They usually specify access
and preservation conditions after termination
of the contract, recommending that the publisher
provides continued access to the licensee,
either without charge or for a fee. Publishers
argue that providing access to a specific range
of journal issues to someone who is no longer
an active subscriber requires extra sophistication
and maintenance of the publisher's access
control system, which justifies charging an
annual fee.
A practical downstream solution for ongoing
access has been set up with the LOCKSS
program (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) which
aims to provide a persistent access preservation
system. Launched in April 2004, it enables
libraries to store their e-journal content, using
a caching system that keeps it available even
after the subscription has been cancelled.
Today some 80 libraries are using this open
source program, and more than 60 publishers,
including very large ones, have agreed to
contribute to the LOCKSS program (although
only 77 titles have been released to the system
so far, content is expected to grow at a steady
pace 142 ).
Potential role of e-print archives for providing
permanent access to journal articles
E-print archives aim to provide open access to
research articles, but they represent a fragmented
and incomplete reproduction of journal issues:
deposit is made on a voluntary basis, there is
no systematic archiving, thus no guarantee of
exhaustiveness.
Although they definitely improve access to
research output, they do not currently provide
a strategic global and comprehensive solution
for permanent access to all journals content
archives. Note that PubMed Central is an
exception in this regard, as it aims to be a digital
archive of life science journal literature and
offers publishers to deposit all their journal
content, allowing for a delay in the full text
release after publication.
Thus, as self-archiving policies expand and
their content grows, networked e-print archives
might in the longer term offer an efficient
alternative access to journal archives, as
today’s archived articles become tomorrow’s
stock. However it will require technology
developments to allow for efficient search,
retrieval, linking, citation analysis etc, across
scattered archives.
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