Slashdot Mirror
Ensuring Permanence Of Online Scientific Journals
"To help solve this problem, the Stanford Library is collaborating with the National Science Foundation and Sun to create a system called LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). LOCKSS is an open source, java/linux based server system which is designed to run on cheap computers at libraries and permanently cache journals to which the libraries subscribe. The LOCKSS systems talk to each other to preserve the integrity of their caches and ensure that there are always at least a minumum number of copies of each article around the world. Read about the current alpha test at the LOCKSS homepage or in this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education "
Sounds like self-interrogating distributed file systems can be useful to people unlikely to get sued by rock bands, as if that wasn't obvious.
It seems like most people are looking as to if this could be used to store, illegally, copyrighted data.
This is for SCIENTIFIC journals. While the journal does have copyright protection, they run articles written by researchers at various universities (and in industry).
The desire of more researchers to be published has resulted in additional journals being formed. Because publishing a journal on the web is dirt cheap, it makes sense that with the Internet available, more of these journals will appear.
The problem is, you need an archive of it. This system is a system to guarantee that we do not lose knowledge. It doesn't even have to be available. They could cut a deal with the publishers of the journals that they will maintain the archive, but that if the company goes out of business or stops providing old articles, the archive can show them.
This would be voluntary, but the publishers would jump at it. Why? Because this system gives them more credibility than a web page alone. The guarantee against the future loss is the best protection for their journal, which makes it more likely to get high quality entries.
While Freenet or other groups may use similar technology, this is a COMPLETELY different project. This isn't about letting people submit data and protect it, this is about preserving the body of scientific knowledge so we don't lose it when a company goes bankrupt. Digital versions are easier to duplicate than paper equivalents, but our system of copyrights is trying to discourage that. E-books, E-journals, E-magazines have a significant risk. A copy of an article in a manilla folder can be lost or destoryed, but is otherwise perfect. A bookmark to a website can disappear at the whim of a publisher, and there are legal AND technical attempts to prevent you from properly saving an article...
It's a very strange situation, and projects like this are VERY important to prevent us from losing knowledge.
I know this sounds elitist, because I'm worrying about the body of knowledge of scientists but not other people. Here is the thing, the information age has allowed more people to publish their ideas and beliefs. However, because we have all jumped onto this technology, we didn't take adequate safeguards to ensure that we don't LOSE anything in this transistion.
If we archived everything that was traditionally published, we'd have the old status quo. If we archive everything traditionally published and let others publish non-archived, we have a better system than the status quo. An environment where we publish everything, maintain nothing is questionable. In some ways it is better than the status quo, more liberal publishing, and in other ways worse, more data loss.
The idea is to come up with a STRICTLY better system, where NOTHING is lost and we gain some advantages. Normally, there are tradeoffs. The goal is to avoid tradeoffs, and just make things better.
Alex