The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), the international trade association for scholarly and professional publishers, recently undertook a survey of its members to enhance awareness of long-term digital preservation issues and to establish the nature and extent of strategies that they have planned. The survey, undertaken in July 2008, was designed to gather information and opinions from publishers concerning long-term preservation.
One of the most important issues facing publishers and their library customers is long-term preservation of digital content. More and more scholarly content is published electronically with an increasing amount 'born digital' with no print counterpart. This dramatic increase in electronic scholarly resources raises important questions about rights and responsibilities relating to long-term preservation. Majority of ALPSP publishers who responded to the survey believe long-term preservation to be a critical issue. While 91 percent either agreed or strongly agreed that long-term preservation is an issue which urgently needs to be addressed within the industry, 9 percent were neutral. More than 90 percent of respondents cited preservation as a major motivating factor.
Although 68 percent of publishers reported understanding of preservation issues within their organisation to be either 'good' or 'reasonable', the survey also revealed a wide range of concerns suggesting an overall lack of confidence, at least for the present. The survey revealed a strong desire amongst almost all publishers for the development of 'best practice' and industry standards. There is some confusion surrounding the nature and extent of publisher participation in long-term preservation schemes, with high numbers of respondents declaring their organisation to be participating in one or more initiatives and yet the schemes themselves reporting substantially lower numbers presently taking part.
Publisher views on who should take responsibility for long-term preservation also revealed some interesting contradictions. Despite presently supporting a range of preservation schemes, a significant majority of publishers indicated they would in fact prefer other groups and institutions to take this responsibility on. National libraries in particular were a popular choice. Finally, the survey revealed most publishers are clear about the distinction between ensuring long-term access and ensuring long-term preservation, with the majority believing they have clear responsibility for long-term access. A worryingly high number however admit to either not trusting their present strategy or not currently having any strategy to deliver here.
The full findings of the survey commissioned from Sarah Durrant of Red Sage Consulting, with co-funding from Portico and ALPSP, is currently available as a free to download PDF from the ALPSP website at www.alpsp.org.
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