Oxford University Press Signs Archiving Agreement with Netherlands National Library

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Oxford University Press and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek sign Archiving Agreement
October 13, 2004

Long-term accessibility of Oxford Journals' archive is assured

The Hague, October 13th, 2004 -
Today, Martin Richardson, Managing Director of Oxford Journals, a Division of OUP, and Wim van Drimmelen, Director General of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the Netherlands, signed an agreement securing long-term digital archiving of Oxford Journals' entire collection. Under the terms of this agreement the KB will receive digital copies of all current and digitized back-archive journal issues made available on the Oxford Journals online platform, and with the agreement of the journal owners where they are not owned by OUP (www.oupjournals.org). This would include 184 scholarly journals spanning the academic spectrum from humanities to science.

"This is an important agreement for Oxford Journals," commented Richardson. "Being able to guarantee secure, long-term preservation of everything that we publish online is a key requirement for us as well as for our authors and readers. In addition to continuing to maintain our own repository, it is our responsibility as part of the academic community to ensure that multiple copies of our digital archives are preserved for use by future generations. We are delighted to be collaborating with the KB, which has made a major contribution to the long-term archiving of digital collections.''

In 1994, the KB decided to include electronic publications in its depository collection. Since then, research and development on long-term digital archiving has been a top priority for the KB, who have worked in close collaboration with IBM to develop an electronic deposit system (e Depot). This was implemented in December 2002 and was the first such system to be owned by a national library.

"For everybody involved in research and the communication of research results - authors, researchers, librarians and publishers alike - this agreement should be viewed as yet another step forward in securing permanence of the records of scholarly research", commented Wim van Drimmelen. "The KB have signed similar agreements with several major publishers and hopes to work with others in the future."

The KB will provide on site access to the Oxford Journals Collection to all who come to the library and are permitted access to the library's collections. In addition, should there be a major interruption to the service offered on the Oxford Journals online platform, the KB would be part of the interim service system.