[HN Gopher] Clockss: Digital preservation services run by academ...
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       Clockss: Digital preservation services run by academic publishers
       and libraries
        
       Author : robtherobber
       Score  : 56 points
       Date   : 2025-10-08 07:53 UTC (5 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (clockss.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (clockss.org)
        
       | yuvadam wrote:
       | I've read several pages on their website and still have no idea
       | what this is.
       | 
       | The ability of the internet to collectively archive content that
       | is important to humanity as a whole - in fully distributed and
       | legally questionable ways - is much more impressive IMO.
        
         | phrotoma wrote:
         | It looks like the core value prop is that it will publish
         | documents which, for one reason or another, stop being
         | available from the original source.
        
           | uniqueuid wrote:
           | And that relates to whole journals, not single papers,
           | apparently.
           | 
           | https://clockss.org/triggered-content/
        
         | millicentricism wrote:
         | LOCKSS is short for: Lots of copies keeps stuff safe.
         | 
         | This is for digital material where perpetual usage rights have
         | been granted, but the original source might not be available.
         | It's also used to make sure that journal content from countries
         | that censor remains available.
         | 
         | This all is mainly for libraries and their online collections.
        
         | sciurus wrote:
         | See https://clockss.org/about/how-clockss-works/ for an
         | overview of the implementation.
        
       | uniqueuid wrote:
       | Since it seems unclear what they do and why it matters:
       | 
       | Clockss seems to be an organization designed to make sure
       | scientific content does not disappear library of Alexandria-
       | style.
       | 
       | The most important task here is being legally safe, which is why
       | they emphasize ivy league credentials, distributed nature, audits
       | and so on. Technically it's not really difficult (except perhaps
       | for dealing with publisher captchas heh).
       | 
       | They are legally safe because of this mechanism:
       | 
       | > Digital content is stored in the CLOCKSS archive with no user
       | access unless a "trigger" event occurs.
       | 
       | All in all I think it's absolutely necessary.
        
       | lyu07282 wrote:
       | This would also be very helpful for datasets, we need to preserve
       | those indefinitely in order to be able to make meaningful
       | benchmarks in the future. Some datasets will only contain
       | references to the source material and labels, each researcher is
       | then supposed to assemble the actual dataset from those
       | references.
        
       | zvr wrote:
       | I remember when the first LOCKSS papers appeared, the idea of
       | "Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe" was so obvious, once explained.
       | The example used at the time was "can you imagine that we lose
       | the Harry Potter book? No, since it's everywhere!".
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-13 23:01 UTC)