The Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ) of Lund University Libraries and the e-Depot of the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) have announced the launch of an initiative to secure the long-term preservation of OA journals. The initiative is being sponsored by the Swedish Library Association.
Under the initiative, DOAJ and KB will carry out a pilot project aimed at setting up a workflow for processing OA journals listed with DOAJ. A limited number of OA journals will be subject to long-term preservation. These activities will be scaled up shortly and long-term archiving of the journals listed in the DOAJ at KB's e-Depot will become an integral part of the service provided by the DOAJ.
Long-term preservation of scholarly publications is seen to be of major importance for the research community. New formats of scholarly publications, new business models and new ways of dissemination are constantly being developed. The latest initiative seeks to secure permanent access to scientific output for the future, with a focus on the preservation of articles published in OA journals.
The composition of the DOAJ collection (currently 4,000 journals) is characterised by a very large number of publishers (over 2,000). Each publisher is publishing very small number of journals on different platforms, in different formats and in more than 50 different languages. Many of these publishers are - with a number of exceptions - fragile when it comes to financial, technical and administrative sustainability.
DOAJ is developed and maintained by Lund University Libraries since 2003. The service aims to give users a one-stop-shop to quality controlled, scientific OA journals in full text.
