The document discusses the preservation of the scholarly record, focusing on the challenges posed by digital access, including reference rot and link rot, which threaten the integrity of academic resources. It outlines the need for effective archiving strategies, the responsibility of libraries and institutions in safeguarding e-serials, and highlights the use of digital preservation services. Several initiatives and tools, such as the Keepers Registry and the Hiberlink plugin, are presented as solutions to mitigate these risks and ensure long-term access to scholarly content.

1. Preserving
The
Integrity
of
The
Scholarly
Record
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinez/5000985919/
Peter
Burnhill,
EDINA
@
University
of
Edinburgh
NaAonal
Library
of
Scotland
George
IV
Bridge
5.30pm
16th
February

2. Preserving
The
Integrity
of
The
Scholarly
Record
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinez/5000985919/
Peter
Burnhill,
EDINA
@
University
of
Edinburgh
NaAonal
Library
of
Scotland
George
IV
Bridge
5.30pm
16th
February
Take
Home
Message:
1) Archive
Streams
of
Issued
Content
2) Avoid
Reference
Rot

3. The
Scholarly
Record
&
Serials
…
[a
focus
on
the
digital]
‘The
Scholarly
Record’
has
a
fuzzy
edge
‘e-­‐journals’
Websites,
Databases,
Repositories
‘Book-­‐length
work’

4. The
Scholarly
Record
&
Serials
…
[a
focus
on
the
digital]
ConAnuing
Resources,
inc.
Serials
‘The
Scholarly
Record’
has
a
fuzzy
edge
‘e-­‐journals’
Websites,
Databases,
Repositories
‘Book-­‐length
work’

5. The
Scholarly
Record
&
Serials
…
[a
focus
on
the
digital]
ConAnuing
Resources,
inc.
Serials
‘The
Scholarly
Record’
has
a
fuzzy
edge
Issued
in
Parts
(Serials)
Content
changes
over
Ame
(IntegraAng)
‘e-­‐journals’
Websites,
Databases,
Repositories
‘Book-­‐length
work’

6. The
Scholarly
Record
&
Serials
…
[a
focus
on
the
digital]
ConAnuing
Resources,
inc.
Serials
‘The
Scholarly
Record’
has
a
fuzzy
edge
Other
‘resources
needed
for
scholarship’
Issued
in
Parts
(Serials)
Content
changes
over
Ame
(IntegraAng)
‘e-­‐journals’
Websites,
Databases,
Repositories
‘Book-­‐length
work’
‘Gov
Docs’

7. 1. What
exactly
is
the
scholarly
record?
• What
of
that
now
‘issued
on
the
Web’?
• And
what
if
we
limit
focus
to
what
could
get
an
ISSN?
2. Whose
responsibility
is
it
to
act
as
steward?
Each
research
library;
library
consorAa;
naAonal/state
libraries/archives?
&
is
this
a
naAonal,
or
a
trans-­‐naAonal
challenge?
The
following
quesAons
are
implicit:

8. An Article, once available in print
on-shelf locally …
… is now online & accessed
remotely,
‘anytime/anywhere’
=> Improved Ease of Access J
But what of Continuity of Access?
Will it be still be there tomorrow?

9. Libraries boast of ‘e-collections’,
but maybe now they only have ‘e-connections’
Picture
credit:
hgp://somanybooksblog.com/2009/03/27/library-­‐tour/
=> real & present danger for the integrity
of what is published as scholarly record

10. This is a global challenge: trans-national action
%age of 132,806 ISSN issued for e-serials (December 2013)
US:
20%
UK:
8.6%
Rest
of
World:
71%
Researchers (& libraries/publishers) in any one country
are dependent upon content written and published as
serials in countries other than their own

11. So, who is offering digital shelving?
① Web-scale not-for-profit archiving agencies:
② National libraries …
③ Research libraries: consortia & specialist centres …
Ingesting content with archival intent …
National Science Library,
Chinese Academy of Sciences
National Science Library,
Chinese Academy of Sciences

12. Many archiving organisations a Good Thing
“Digital information is best preserved by replicating it at multiple
archives run by autonomous organizations”
B. Cooper and H. Garcia-Molina (2002)
Some
bad
stuff
will
happen!

13. A
Project
to
Pilot
an
E-­‐journal
PreservaAon
Registry
Service
Need to know who is looking after what & how?

14. ISSN
Register
E-J Preservation Registry Service
E-Journal
Preservation
Registry
user requirements
(a)
(b)
ISSN-­‐L
as
kernel
field
METADATA
on extant e-serials
METADATA
on preservation action
Digital Preservation
Agencies
Pilot: CLOCKSS, Portico; BL, KB;
UK LOCKSS Alliance
A
Project
to
Pilot
an
E-­‐journal
PreservaAon
Registry
Service
Need to know who is looking after what & how?

15. ISSN
Register
E-J Preservation Registry Service
E-Journal
Preservation
Registry
user requirements
(a)
(b)
ISSN-­‐L
as
kernel
field
METADATA
on extant e-serials
METADATA
on preservation action
Digital Preservation
Agencies
Pilot: CLOCKSS, Portico; BL, KB;
UK LOCKSS Alliance
A
Project
to
Pilot
an
E-­‐journal
PreservaAon
Registry
Service
Need to know who is looking after what & how?
The Keepers Registry
"Tales
from
the
Keepers
Registry"
Serials
Review
39.1
(2013)

16. …
to
discover
who
is
looking
a5er
what
thekeepers.org as Global Monitor
*New
in
2014*
Library
of
Congress
and
Scholars
Portal
now
reporAng
in

17. e-­‐journals
should
be
easy
–
right?
the
Keepers
Registry
recorded
In
2011,
16,558
Atles
‘ingested
&
archived’
by
at
least
1
‘keeper’
in
2013,
21,557
in
2014,
26,195
now
26,712
9,731
'ingested
&
archived'
by
3+
…
more
archiving
&
as
more
archives
report
into
Registry
!
Some
signs
of
Progress:
Wrigen
&
produced
by
Julie
Brown,
1989

18. “Are we there yet?” … “Don’t think so”
‘Ingest Ratio’= titles being ingested by one or more Keeper
/ ‘online serials’ in ISSN Register
= 26,195 / 136,965 [in March 2014]
=> 19%
(We do not know about 80% of all resources having ISSN)
‘KeepSafe Ratio’ = titles being ingested by 3+ Keepers
/ ‘online serials’ in ISSN Register
= 9,656 / 136,965
=> 7%

19. Evidence
on
what
libraries
care
about
Using
Title
List
Comparison
tool
in
Members
Area
of
Keepers
Registry
As
reported
in:
P.
Burnhill
(2013)
Tales
from
The
Keepers
Registry:
Serial
Issues
About
Archiving
&
the
Web.
Serials
Review
39
(1),
3–20.
hgp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/arAcle/pii/S0098791313000178,
&
hgps://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/6682
In
2011/12
three
major
research
libraries
in
the
USA
(Columbia,
Cornell
&
Duke)
checked
archival
status
of
serial
Atles
regarded
as
important
‘Ingest
RaKo’
=
22%
to
28%,
ie
about
a
quarter
=>
fate
of
c.75%
is
unknown

20. very
many
‘at
risk’
e-­‐journals
from
many
small
publishers
BIG
publishers
act
early
but
incompletely
Priority:
find
economic
way
to
archive
content
from
…

21. …
logs
for
the
UK
OpenURL
Router*
• 8.5m
full
text
requests
in
UK
during
2012
=>
53,311
online
Atles
requested
Analysis
in
2013::
‘Ingest
RaKo’
=
32%
(16,985/53,311)
=>
over
two
thirds
68%
(36,326
Atles)
held
by
none!
Evidence
based
on
what
Researchers
Use
*
As
reported
in
Keepers
Registry
Blog,
OpenURL
Router
passes
‘discovery’
requests
to
commercial
OpenURL
resolver
services;
developed
&
delivered
by
EDINA
as
part
of
Jisc
support
for
UK
universiAes
&
colleges

22. …
logs
for
the
UK
OpenURL
Router*
• 8.5m
full
text
requests
in
UK
during
2012
=>
53,311
online
Atles
requested
Analysis
in
2013::
‘Ingest
RaKo’
=
32%
(16,985/53,311)
=>
over
two
thirds
68%
(36,326
Atles)
held
by
none!
Evidence
based
on
what
Researchers
Use
*
As
reported
in
Keepers
Registry
Blog,
OpenURL
Router
passes
‘discovery’
requests
to
commercial
OpenURL
resolver
services;
developed
&
delivered
by
EDINA
as
part
of
Jisc
support
for
UK
universiAes
&
colleges
“I
believe
we've
…
a
problem
here.”
[John
Swigert,
Jr.]

23. Another threat to the integrity of the record
Language Technology Group
Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
‘Reference
Rot’
When
what
was
referenced
&
cited
ceases
to
say
the
same
thing,
or
‘has
ceased
to
be’
hJp://www.snorgtees.com/this-­‐parrot-­‐has-­‐ceased-­‐to-­‐be
Reference Rot = Link Rot + Content Drift
“when links to web resources
no longer point to what they once did”

24. Link Rot
‘Link Rot’

25. + Content Drift: What is at end of URI has changed, or gone!
http://dl00.org
2000
http://dl00.org
2004
http://dl00.org
2005
http://dl00.org
2008
(a)
Dynamic
content
as
values
on
webpage
changes
over
Ame
(b)
StaKc
content
but
very
different
(o{en
unrelated)
web
pages

26. Hiberlink: Time Travel for The Scholarly Web
1. Threat: Creating evidence on extent of ‘Reference Rot’
– Main focus: references (& URIs) made in Journal Articles
• "Scholarly Context Not Found: One in Five Articles Suffers from Reference Rot"
– PLOS One paper published on 26 December 2014.
• Harvard Law Library & permaCC reference rot in Supreme Court judgments
• http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/cobweb
– Also looked at Reference Rot & the e-Thesis, ETD2014
2. Remedy: Opportunities for productive intervention
– Identify workflows: preparation, publication, ingest
– Prototype tools to avoid or limit reference rot
– Pro-active or ‘transactional’ archiving as remedy
• Embedding such ‘solutions’ in existing tools & infrastructure
• Propose/test new infrastructure for temporal referencing
– supporting & using the Memento protocol

27. Peter Burnhill,
EDINAhgp://www.res|ulliving.com/wp-­‐content/uploads/2013/12/Time-­‐1024x861.jpg
Preserving
the
integrity
of
the
scholarly
record

28. • Robust Link - re-factor the HTML link that is returned
‘Infrastructure’ to Enable Remedy
<a href="http://www.bnf.fr">
Link to the BNF
</a>
b) Augment Link with a set of Datetime & location pairs
<a href="http://www.bnf.fr"
mset="2014-05-19,
http://archive.today/zdpAn 2014-05-15 memento">
Link to the BNF
</a>
a) Take simple URI - to French National Library (say)
hgp://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/

29. Remedy for The Integrity of The Scholarly Record
Envisage
the
best
opportuniAes
for
IntervenAon
to
make
Remedy,
to
‘flash-­‐freeze’,
either
to
avoid
reference
rot
or
to
‘stop
the
rot’.
3
basic
workflows:
① Study:
PreparaAon
-­‐>
(Review)
-­‐>
Submission
② PublicaAon:
Editorial
-­‐>
(Revision)
-­‐>
Acceptance
-­‐>
Issue
③ Post-­‐PublicaAon:
Deposit/Ingest
-­‐>
Provide/Access
-­‐>
Use
IdenPfy
the
Actors
involved
in:
① ComposiAon:
author/creator
② Public
Release:
editor/referee/copy
③ CuraAon:
librarian
/
repository
manager
/
archivist

30. Hiberlink Plug-in: help authors & middle-folk do the right thing:
① Triggers archiving of referenced web content when it
is noted in:
– Zotero - used by authors to manage references
https://www.zotero.org/
– Open Journal System (OJS) - used by OA publishers
https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/
② Returns Datetime URI for archived content that can
be used in the citation
Two-step Remedy To Avoid Reference Rot

31. Time’s Up!
thekeepers.org
hiberlink.org
• See also
• thekeepers.blogs.edina.ac.uk
• safenet.blogs.edina.ac.uk/
HelpDesk: edina@ed.ac.uk