A collaborative approach to preserving at-risk open access journals

In the September 2020 preprint “Open is not forever”, (Laakso et al.) discuss the high number of Open Access journals that disappear from the web. It is a known problem in the digital preservation world that long-tail journals are especially at-risk of disappearing. Five leading parties are now collaborating to address this problem: the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), CLOCKSS, Internet Archive, the Public Knowledge Project Preservation Network (PKP PN), and International ISSN / Keepers Registry. Building from the existing DOAJ infrastructure, we are establishing a central hub where preservation agencies can harvest consistent metadata, and access full-text. Each of the preservation partners offers somewhat different solutions for publishers to preserve their content. The project will offer free and low-cost options for preservation and access. In the first phase, the target is diamond OA journals (those with no author processing charges), because these are the journals that are least likely to participate in a preservation service and hence are most at-risk of disappearing. The project is currently coordinating technical designs, service development, infrastructure, and sustainability planning.