JASPER: a cross-industry collaboration making a real difference!

Two years ago, DOAJ announced it would take proactive steps to prevent open access journals from disappearing from the Internet. Two months later, Project JASPER was born. 

JASPER is a cross-industry collaboration with one main goal: to help open access journals be preserved long-term. It sounds simple, but there are challenges. Lack of resources and understanding around why preservation is needed means that many journals aren’t ever preserved. 

The JASPER partners—CLOCKSS, DOAJ, Internet Archive, The Keepers Registry, and Public Knowledge Project (PKP)—collaborated to build on existing trusted infrastructure and services. Journals indexed in DOAJ can apply to be included in a variety of long-term digital preservation services if they meet a range of selection criteria. Journals can choose one or more preservation routes: currently, Internet Archive, the PKP’s Preservation Network (PKP-PN), or CLOCKSS.

Some of the most vulnerable journals in DOAJ have been archived thanks to the partners’ commitment and belief in the value of the initiative. As Alicia Wise, Executive Director of CLOCKSS, explains: “The JASPER project aligns powerfully with the mission and values of the CLOCKSS community. We aim to work with libraries and publishers worldwide to ensure the long-term survival of scholarship for future generations. Our goal is to protect others’ content; it is not about any individual or about CLOCKSS but about preserving research and knowledge and making it accessible to all. We are committed to equality and diversity and seek to collaborate with partners in all regions of the world. And JASPER helps us to do all of this. Its ‘common good’ approach is doing what is in the best interest of the global scholarly community and the knowledge we work to preserve.” (Members of the CLOCKSS community can be found at https://clockss.org/digital-archive-community/)

“As part of its mandate to make knowledge public, PKP understands that preserving and maintaining long-term access to published content is critical, and JASPER is an outstanding project to ensure this happens”, says PKP Operations Director Kevin Stranack. To support this, PKP joined Project JASPER to ensure that OJS journals from across the globe had a path to preservation in addition to the PKP Preservation Network (https://pkp.sfu.ca/pkp-pn/)

“Participation in Project JASPER is an important part of Internet Archive’s broader effort for a collaborative approach to ensuring the preservation of, and persistent, universal access to, scholarly work,” says Jefferson Bailey, Director of Archiving & Data Services. “Project JASPER complements similar Internet Archive efforts bringing print open scholarship online, such as our work with MIT Press and Punctum Books, integration with Center for Open Science to preserve open science outputs, and the Internet Archive Scholar project, which has preserved over 130+ million open access articles and datasets from the public web, 25+ million of which are available for full-text search and are indexed in Google Scholar. Project JASPER helps give preservation infrastructure to non-profit, OA publishers that wouldn’t otherwise have the resources to do this work and helps ensure scholarship is available into the future via a coordinated, multi-custodial approach to preservation.”

A small but significant success

Since its launch two years ago, JASPER has solicited applications from around 100 journal editors, which led to just over 40 applications being submitted. Of the 32 journals selected, 29 chose to be preserved via CLOCKSS and Internet Archive, and three chose to have their OJS-based publications preserved in the PKP-PN. Fourteen of the 26 journals that chose CLOCKSS and Internet Archive are actively sending full-text content via a DOAJ-Internet Archive-CLOCKSS pipeline.

Examples include the Columbo Business Journal, Sri Lanka, whose Editor in Chief, Dinuka, spoke about the positive benefits JASPER brings to her journal:

Fafnir, the Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, Finland:

And Alphaville, a journal of film and screen media, Ireland:

“It’s really rewarding to see journals connect themselves to JASPER,” said Dominic Mitchell, DOAJ’s Operations Manager. “When we started talking about the initiative two years ago, there was a sense of urgency that something had to be done, and it had to be done now. However, it took us a while to build momentum, partly due, I think, to the fact that we needed to find our rhythm and build a process that was simple to follow. All the project partners were fantastic at coming forward, offering help and resources, and we’re now seeing the fruits of that willingness to help.”

JASPER passed the 100 milestone and has received 126 ZIP files, including everything from a single issue to entire back archives. 

A milestone

The “upload route” is the one which sends content to Internet Archive where it can be collected by preservation agencies. Currently, that is only CLOCKSS although the aim is to add further preservation agencies. Publishers choosing this route must put the content they want preserved into ZIP files and send them to DOAJ. Publishers can include anything that they want to be preserved: PDFs, images, data, multimedia, and so on. 

As this blog post was written, JASPER passed the 100 milestone and has received 126 ZIP files, including everything from a single issue to entire back archives. 

A growing reputation

Over time, we have seen more and more journals contact JASPER directly, asking if they can be preserved. We know that the preservation of journals is still a pressing need in the scholarly publishing community. Recent figures circulated on social media by one of the DOAJ Ambassadors for Indonesia, Ikhwan Arief, show this all too plainly.  

We welcome and encourage more journals that meet the criteria to get in touch! JASPER is a vital component in preserving the academic record for the long term. 

Sustaining the preservation of vulnerable journals

Running for two years on the commitment of the project partners, JASPER is a perfect example of a cross-industry initiative that came together quickly and has effectively turned words into action. The project partners have proven that there is a need for this preservation lifeline for vulnerable journals. And we know that we can do more. 

JASPER is a funding opportunity for institutions, publishers and funders who want to contribute to a practical project where immediate effects are seen. Extra funds would allow us to be more inclusive in the journals we archive; we’d be able to remove some of the current criteria and open this up to a more extensive range of journals. We’d also be able to invite more preservation agencies to connect, and we could automate some of the current processes. If you’d like more information on how to support us, email preservation@doaj.org.