Publishers Perspective: Digitization of print resources, and archiving of digital resources

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Publishers PerspectiveDigitization of print
resources, and archiving of digital resources

• Judy Best, June 13, 2006

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NRC Research Press Background

• NRC Research Press has been publishing scholarly
  journals since 1929 the electronic editions have
  been available since 1996
• Publishes journals in biology, life sciences, and
  physical sciences (everything from botany to
  chemistry to environmental engineering)
• Publish 16 journals, plus monographs and
  conference proceedings
• Offer print and electronic subscriptions
• A continuing investment in electronic publishing
  keeps us at the forefront of scientific
  communications
• XML-tagged data
• HTML, PDF, metadata
• Print

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Digitization of print edition

• Digitization of back issues
• Pilot project
• Canadian Journal of Chemistry
• From 1951
• Approximately 26,000 articles

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Digitization of print edition

• Process
• Scanned PDF image (NRC Reprographics)
• Metadata (contractor) OCLC document type
  definition (DTD)
• Created OCR PDF (in-house)
• Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional
• Creates a single layered file - PDF image PDF
  OCR

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Digitization of print edition

• Benefits
• Metadata deposited to CAS (Chemical Abstracting
  Service), CrossRef (for reference linking from
  other scholarly journals), Chemport (for
  reference linking from other chemistry journals)
• Revenue through subscriptions
• To be indexed by Google and Google Scholar
• Tagged metadata in a standard format now
  available for future uses
• Future Plans
• Digitize back issues of all journals (PDFs plus
  metadata)
• Expand locations and services for depositing
  content

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Archiving electronic edition

• What is the archival format? Controversy in the
  publishing community
• Is PDF archival? Possible problems with being
  machine-readable in future
• SGML- and XML-tagged data considered archival
  because
• they are text files
• they can be read by all platforms
• they can be translated to graphical (HTML or PDF)
  format by writing a simple program
• NRC Research Press currently implementing
  XML-based workflow for all journals in order to
  have a fully XML-tagged version of all articles

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Archiving electronic edition

• Library and Archives Canada
• Formerly the National Library of Canada and
• Public Archives of Canada
• Mandate
• To preserve the documentary heritage of Canada
  for the benefit of present and future
  generations
• To be a source of enduring knowledge accessible
  to all, contributing to the cultural, social and
  economic advancement of Canada
• To facilitate in Canada cooperation among
  communities involved in the acquisition,
  preservation and diffusion of knowledge and
• To serve as the continuing memory of the
  government of Canada and its institutions.

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Depositing material to LAC

• Publisher required by law to archive print
• Deposit of electronic version is voluntary
• NRC Research Press deposits print and electronic
  content
• PDF, metadata
• Website duplicated

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Accessing electronic archive

• Access
• Depositing data is only useful if you can access
  it
• In case of catastrophe, subscribers require
  access to our electronic edition
• Current LAC duplication of our Website is not
  available to the public (dark archive), but could
  be made available in case of disaster
• Explore other avenues to make content available
  to subscribers in case of disaster
• Portico (www.portico.org) sustains an archive of
  scholarly journals, on behalf of publishers and
  subscribing libraries
• In event of disaster, publishers agree to allow
  libraries to access the content (PDF or tagged
  SGML/XML) through Portico

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Digitization and archiving notes for publishers

• Publishers need to have an integrated plan for
  digitization of print resources and archiving of
  electronic resources
• Factors to consider
• Access (disaster scenarios)
• Communicate to subscribers more likely to
  subscribe electronically if they know the Web
  site will be available in event of disaster
• Archival format
• Format migration will it be readable in 10
  years?
• Device-independence can it be read by any
  computer?
• Media hard disk, tape, DVD?
• Reuse and repurposing of metadata and full text
• Services available (national library, Portico)

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