Chinese Academy of Sciences National Science Library to preserve Nature Publishing Group content

    National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NSLC) and Nature Publishing Group (NPG) signed an agreement to provide long-term digital preservation of NPG’s content in Beijing on May 29, 2012.

    The agreement was signed by Dr. Zhang Xiao Lin, Director of National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Science and Antoine Bocquet, Director, Asia-Pacific, Nature Publishing Group on behalf of their organizations.

    “NPG publishes some of the most important scientific journals in the world and the long term accessibility under any conditions of these strategic information resources is critical to Chinese research and innovation”, said Dr. Xiaolin Zhang, “I am glad we could reach an agreement with NPG on the preservation of Nature-branded journals in China which also provides a best practice example for other resources. I am looking forward to cooperation between CAS and NPG in many new and interesting territories”.

    Under the agreement, the NSLC will establish and maintain an archive of Nature, the Nature research and Nature Review journals, and all NPG-owned journal current content. An archive back to 1997 will be created, and new content will be added as it is published. The archive would be made accessible to CAS institutes with nature.com site license agreements in the event that emergency or force majeure make nature.com unavailable in China. Of the 100 CAS institutes, 70 have site licences to NPG journals that will be preserved under this agreement.

    “Nature Publishing Group is pleased to co-operate with the National Science Library CAS in this way,” said Charlotte Liu, Managing Director, The Macmillan Group, Greater China. “This extends NPG’s long-term digital preservation efforts to our valued customers in China, providing researchers with access to a long-term preservation archive in the event that access to nature.com is unavailable in China. The National Science Library is an excellent partner with experience in digital preservation, and we are pleased that NPG-owned content will now form part of its archives.”

    NPG also ensures long-term digital preservation of its content through PORTICO and the not for profit CLOCKSS.