5 November 2018
CLOCKSS has announced an agreement with four universities – Stanford Libraries (US), Humboldt University (Germany), the University of Edinburgh (UK), and the University of Alberta Libraries (Canada) – to formalise its succession plan to ensure perpetual preservation. These four of CLOCKSS's twelve library nodes have agreed to continue to preserve the digital content that is preserved in CLOCKSS, if the organisation were
to cease to exist. In that unlikely event, Stanford Libraries, Humboldt University, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Alberta Libraries would take over the responsibility and the organisation for running the LOCKSS software across the CLOCKSS content, to continue preservation for the future.
"The plan provides for continuity should CLOCKSS cease to be able to fulfil its commitments. If such a time comes it is likely to be a period of much wider uncertainty and significant change, and so the commitments from these four leading and long-standing successor organisations provide a strong foundation to ensure ongoing digital preservation," said CLOCKSS Executive Director Craig Van Dyck. He added, "The plan is the outcome of CLOCKSS's ongoing collaboration between librarians and publishers – a dialogue that continues to examine how best to address the community's needs."
The CLOCKSS Board - including twelve leading academic libraries and twelve leading academic publishers - has endorsed this plan, which also has a broader community of support among its 260 participating publishers and 300 supporting libraries.
The CLOCKSS Succession Plan is part of its Trusted Repository Audit Checklist (TRAC) certification by the Center for Research Libraries.