11 September 2009, Lynnfield, MA USA—CrossRef has collaborated with archiving organizations and publishers to ensure that several journals that have ceased publication remain linkable with the CrossRef DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) originally assigned to the articles. The titles include Auto/Biography and Graft from SAGE and Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention from Oxford University Press (OUP). All three titles are now available through both CLOCKSS and Portico.

An archive “trigger event” occurs when a published journal or other content is no longer available from the publisher. Trigger events can occur for a variety of reasons. Both SAGE and OUP have had agreements in place with archive organizations for several years, but the discontinuation of these titles marked the first time those arrangements had been implemented with real-world cases.

“Two important tenets of CrossRef’s mission are persistence and cooperation,” said Ed Pentz, Executive Director of CrossRef. “Making sure that the CrossRef DOIs that have been assigned to content that has moved from a publisher journal platform to an archive still resolve to the articles is an important part of that persistence. Persistence is not only achieved through technology but by cooperation: CrossRef, publishers, journal hosting services, and the archiving organizations have all worked together to ensure continued access to the scholarly record. These journals are particularly strong examples of the system in action as there are multiple archives available to guarantee ongoing access.”

“Graft articles were made available in Portico at the end of 2007 and Auto/Biography in mid-2008,” said Carol Richman, Director of Licensing at SAGE. “We believe that we have a responsibility to ensure scholarly content and research materials remain accessible in the future, and have therefore made long-term commitments with a number of archive partners. CrossRef’s multiple resolution service allows users following a CrossRef DOI link to choose whether to access the archived copies through Portico or CLOCKSS.”

“Our first triggered journal is Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention,” said Claire Kearney, Head of IT, Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press.
“We appreciated the opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to archiving by enabling multiple resolution links that lead to both CLOCKSS and Portico. Not only did we need to work out the technical issues of ensuring persistent linking to archived content, but the agreements we have with the archiving organizations and with CrossRef provide a “publication will” that ensures this information will continue to be available to scholars.”