Preserving Electronic Scholarship for the Future: An Overview of LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, Portico, CHORUS, and the Keepers Registry

Electronic resources are becoming the backbone of many library collections. Electronic journals in particular have become the default format for most periodical literature in all fields of scholarship. The mission of librarians, the publishing industry, and nonprofit organizations is to ensure that electronic scholarship remains accessible to future generations in an affordable and sustainable manner. The focus for the first edition of “In Layman's Terms” is on LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, CHORUS, Portico, and the Keepers Registry, five initiatives dedicated to the preservation and to the perpetual access of electronic scholarship. It includes a brief history of each initiative. It looks at their missions and their different roles in preserving and providing access to electronic resources and the benefits and costs in joining them and being involved with them. It identifies the relationships among these initiatives.