Portico today announced that Pain Reviews—an electronic journal that ceased publication in 2002—has been secured, preserved, and made accessible through its digital preservation service.
Hodder Arnold published Pain Reviews online from 1998 to 2002. In 2006, Hodder ended its journal program and sold its list to SAGE Publications, except for Pain Reviews. The title had already been discontinued and, at the time, there were no options for moving it into a managed digital preservation service.
Now, seven years later, Hodder has given Portico the right to preserve the title and to provide access to its nearly 500 participating libraries around the world.
“This is an important development for libraries and scholars,” commented Eileen Fenton, Portico’s Executive Director. “There is volatility in the publishing market. Publications come and go, and titles that become orphaned over time need the kind of permanent preservation and care that Portico routinely provides for electronic scholarly literature. Our ability to ensure libraries will not lose access to content in the future provides all concerned—publishers, libraries and scholars—with the support necessary to transition securely to reliance on e-resources.”
Portico has secured the original digital files from IngentaConnect (a Publishing Technology service), Hodder’s former technology provider, and has migrated them to an archival format, deposited the files into the archive, and is managing their preservation including migrating the content to new formats over time. The content will be removed from the Ingenta website. It has already been pushed out to the Portico delivery site for access by users at Portico participating institutions.
“This is an important step forward in the academic publishing industry’s shift to e-resources,” said Louise Tutton, Senior Vice President, Publishing Technology. “Very few publishers want to continue to spend money supporting titles that no longer deliver economic value or to invest in technology format upgrades for them, and titles cease publication every year. Shifting responsibility for these publications to entities like Portico so that libraries and scholars can be assured of long-term access makes good sense.”