A book published openly should still be there in fifty years, whether or not we are.
A printed book survives its publisher because copies sit on library shelves. A digital edition survives only where it has been deposited elsewhere. The arrangements below do not depend on the Press continuing to exist.
What We Do
- CLOCKSS and Portico. Every title is deposited in these independent, community-governed dark archives. If our content becomes unavailable, they release it openly. This is the guarantee that matters most.
- DOAB and OAPEN. Full text and metadata are deposited with the Directory of Open Access Books and the OAPEN Library, which host and serve the books independently of our own platform.
- Legal deposit. Titles are lodged with Library and Archives Canada under Canadian legal deposit.
- Funder repositories. Where a funder requires it, for example Europe PMC and PubMed Central Bookshelf for Wellcome-funded work, we make that deposit as well.
- Institutional repositories. The licence permits deposit anywhere; we supply files to authors and their institutions on request.
- Persistent identifiers. DOIs are registered with Crossref and maintained. If a book moves, the DOI still resolves.
Formats and Integrity
We archive in open, non-proprietary formats (tagged PDF/A, EPUB 3, and structured XML source) so that files remain readable as software changes. Fixity is checked on deposit. Metadata is archived alongside the content, because a file without its metadata is much harder to find and to trust.
If the Press Ceases to Operate
Our books remain available through CLOCKSS, Portico, DOAB, OAPEN and the legal deposit libraries, under the Creative Commons licences already granted, which are irrevocable. No future decision by us, by the Foundation, or by anyone who might acquire either can put an already published title behind a paywall. That irrevocability is a structural property of open licensing, and it is one of the strongest arguments for it.