Elsevier has announced that Portico, a nonprofit electronic archiving
service, will be an official e-journal archive for the company. The
partnership with Portico will ensure that the over 2,100 current and
formerly published journals on Elsevier's ScienceDirect service are
preserved in a permanent archive for posterity.

 

Elsevier has long been a leader in the area of permanent e-journal
preservation and an advocate of publisher responsibility for digital
archiving. In 1996 Elsevier began depositing e-copies of its Dutch imprint
journals with the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the
Netherlands. Discussions with the KB continued in 2000 for it to become
Elsevier's first official archive, leading to the current agreement to
archive all Elsevier ScienceDirect journals.  Since that time, Elsevier has
been seeking additional trusted third parties around the world to be
official archives and the new agreement with Portico is a major step in this
global plan.   

 

"Partnering with Portico was a natural choice in continuing our goal of
permanent archiving. Portico's mission and guiding principles are in line
with Elsevier's own commitment to preserving the integrity of the scholarly
and scientific record," said Karen Hunter, Senior Vice President at
Elsevier. "Researchers, librarians and publishers alike recognize the need
for digital archives to be protected and preserved for future generations of
scholars and researchers. In partnering with Portico, Elsevier is assuring
that Elsevier journal titles will be available in perpetuity."

 

Elsevier's collaboration with Portico coincides with a recent matching grant
from the Library of Congress made to Portico.  The three million dollar
award from the Library of Congress' National Digital Information
Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) will assist Portico in
their economic model and technical infrastructure building efforts. The
grant from the NDIIPP is part of Library of Congress' efforts to achieve
permanent archives of digital materials. 

 

Digital archiving is particularly critical now with the steady increase in
electronic scholarly journals and conversion of library subscriptions to
electronic-only, which has sparked concern from academics, librarians and
publishers about their long-term availability.  

 

"We live in an electronic age that has seen rapid transition to reliance on
electronic formats for scholarly works. It is both urgent and important that
the community take steps to preserve the scholarship of the past, present
and future," said Kevin Guthrie, president of Ithaka and chairman of the
JSTOR Board of Trustees.  "In supporting and launching Portico, Ithaka and
JSTOR are offering the community a concrete way for publishers to secure
their content and for libraries to act on their preservation mandate.  Our
partnership with Elsevier ensures that a substantial and essential core of
scientific literature will be preserved."

 

Permanent preservation of journals is a common goal for both libraries and
publishers. It is essential to preserve scholarly works. 

 

"Successful preservation of electronic journals depends upon cooperation and
collaboration between libraries and publishers," said William Bowen,
chairman of the Ithaka Board of Trustees and president of The Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation.  "The long-term success of Portico depends on the
willingness of publishers like Elsevier to commit to preserving content as
well as the willingness of libraries to support the archive's ongoing work.
Elsevier's commitment to Portico is a critical step forward in helping to
establish a reliable preservation infrastructure for the community."  

 

Portico has been in development for more than three years and is now moving
into implementation.  The more than 7 million Elsevier articles will be
loaded into Portico beginning in 2006.  Portico is working to build a group
of contributing publishers and libraries who will be participating in
supporting the Portico archive.

Tony McSeán 
Director of Library Relations 
Elsevier 
+44 7795 960516 
+44 20 7611 4413