ABSTRACT
Since their origin in the seventeenth century, scientific journals have become an essential part of the process of science and scholarship. The scientific literature is cumulative, enabling researchers to build upon the work of those who have gone before them through acknowledgment and citation. John Ziman has noted that the citation of references validates many of the claims made in published papers and embeds them in the preexisting consensus.1 Until very recently, research libraries and national libraries took most of the responsibility
for the long-term stewardship of this part of the scientific record, working collectively to ensure continued access to the content of printed journals. Although this system was not perfect in every single way, its success in preserving content of value was based upon distribution and redundancy. Dale Flecker has pointed out that in the print era, libraries subscribed to and maintained large and highly redundant collections of journal content, also investing in a range of activities intended to maintain usability, but which also actively supported their long-term preservation.2 As elaborated by Sadie Honey, “Since multiple libraries subscribe to and process the same journals, there is a high probability that at least one copy, if not multiple copies, of each issue of those journals will be available for future scholars.”3 In the digital environment, however, all this has changed.
