The shift to digital publishing has had revolutionary effects for researchers. Libraries licence e-journals from publishers, who provide quick and easy access form their online platforms. This enables students and lecturers to get to the articles they need easily and conveniently from their laptop or office. In terms of access, the picture is rosy. It is less so, however, when it comes to the long term. Continuing access and preservation have traditionally been enabled by the collecting activities of libraries who took a stewardship role in relation to the scholarly record. As publishers now only licence access to their content, and academic libraries no longer hold their own copies, the provision of post-cancellation access and archiving falls to publishers whose concerns are typically  commerical.

This is a situation I’ve been thinking through lately as part of the Keepers Extra project: I’ve drafted a couple of conference papers exploring the issues, one in collaboration with my colleague Peter Burnhill, was presented in Hannover, Germany and has been published in the proceedings of the IATUL conference. The other was delivered at ‘Where is the Library?’ the NOWAL Conference, July 2015, Manchester UK

Otty, L. ‘Stewardship and preservation of e-journals: what is the role of the academic library?’ Where is the Library? NOWAL Conference, July 2015, Manchester UK