Global LOCKSS Network

Local preservation of electronic journals and books for post-cancellation access, post-disappearance access, and failover access, at 80 libraries and counting.

For Libraries For Publishers Contact

GLN membership is a big deal for your library beyond the range of benefits and support it affords:

• Custody of the scholarly record on library-owned storage, not in the cloud. Your GLN node keeps durable, validated digital copies of serials and monographs in the one place they will always be accessible to your users: the library.
• Digital preservation by libraries, not by vendors. The GLN operates around the world, and around the clock, to check and repair stored content. Member libraries work together to ensure that the scholarly record stays intact, authentic, and accessible.
• Post-cancellation access in-house. No one likes to cancel a journal subscription, but it happens. GLN membership lets you keep access to all of the content you have already paid for, even after you are no longer a subscriber, without a third-party intermediary.
• Post-disappearance access and failover access. Researchers enjoy seamless, uninterrupted access to your subscription content, no matter the status of the publisher's Web site. If the site is gone or unreachable, your users won't even notice.
• At-risk journals and books. In addition to commercial scholarly publishing, the GLN specializes in bringing at-risk scholarship to the best stewards: librarians. This includes open access journals and books from all disciplines all over the world, which are often not preserved broadly^1,2.
• Support included at every level. GLN membership opens the door to the LOCKSS Program's staff for technical support, including hardware procurement, installation, configuration, user training, and more -- whether you have an institutional IT department or not.

Contact us

GLN membership grants libraries access to an array of benefits and support:

• Growing catalog of preservable scholarly content. Over 13,200 journals and serials and 23,600 books and monographs from 740 publishers and societies.
• In-house post-cancellation access, post-disappearance access, and failover access. Scholars at your institution can access locally preserved content that the library no longer subscribes to, has disappeared from the Web, or is temporarily unreachable.
• White glove technical support. Personable help with installation, configuration, maintenance, troubleshooting, and integration, via e-mail, phone, or video conference. 
• Live user training. Helping library and IT staff learn about the LOCKSS software, when your organization joins and whenever someone new joins your organization.
• Provisioning and procurement assistance. We work with library and IT staff to help you acquire and/or set up a GLN node fit for your technology environment.
• Community. Documentation, wiki, discussions, special interest groups, and more, as part of a network of 80 partner libraries.

Contact us

Annual GLN membership fees depend on your library materials budget (13 tiers) and your geographical location (6 zones). Please contact us for consortial discounts and multi-year discounts. Fees cover a membership benefits and technical support, and as noted below, the cost of processing an ever-growing and ever-evolving corpus of Web-based content into the network.

Contact us

• How much local storage is needed to participate in the GLN? The totality of the GLN's holdings over 20+ years in operation is 45 to 50 TB of stored content, but not every resource is still preservable today and not every library subscribes to everything preservable. We recommend 30 to 40 TB depending on your library's subscriptions.
• How much does hardware and storage cost, if not provided by my local IT department? The LOCKSS Program's GLN staff can help you with hardware and storage procurement. To give a quick estimate, a basic GLN-ready server with a 40 TB capacity and a 5-year warranty for an expected 5-year service life starts at about USD 3,500 before taxes and shipping, which is equivalent to only USD 700 per year or just USD 17.50 per terabyte per year.
• Can a desktop computer be used, in lieu of a physical server or virtual machine? Yes. If you do not have access to an IT server room, the LOCKSS Program's GLN staff can work with you to dedicate a suitable desktop computer to being a GLN node appliance.
• If the LOCKSS software is open source and free, why are there GLN membership fees? The LOCKSS Program takes pride in making the GLN and all our projects and partnerships the most economical digital preservation solutions in the world. The software is free, but processing publisher content (both content from newly participating publishers and new content from already participating publishers) to make it available for preservation in the GLN, and developing and maintaining publisher-specific software needed to keep up with ever-changing publisher Web sites and publishing platforms, takes our staff of 13 work year-round. See the benefits and support afforded by GLN membership. 
• What is the difference between LOCKSS and CLOCKSS? CLOCKSS is a digital archive, and LOCKSS is the digital preservation software system used to secure and preserve its holdings.
• What is the difference between the GLN and CLOCKSS? The GLN and CLOCKSS are complementary initiatives, both using the LOCKSS digital preservation software system to preserve the scholarly record. The GLN delivers post-disappearance access, failover access, and post-cancellation access at a local scale, while CLOCKSS ensures the long-term survival of the scholarly record at a global scale. Joint participation in the GLN and CLOCKSS supports a comprehensive digital preservation strategy for libraries.

Contact us

These three alarming statistics on the state of digital preservation of the scholarly record in 2024 should be a wake-up call for scholarly publishers to participate in the GLN as part of their digital preservation strategy:

• Trusted and secure. The GLN uses the same open source LOCKSS technology that secures CLOCKSS, the only repository to receive a perfect score for Technologies, Technical Infrastructure, and Security from a CRL TRAC audit³. The LOCKSS software securely ensures the integrity of preserved content using a peer-reviewed, subversion- and exfiltration-resistant, audit-and-repair protocol.
• Your publishing platform is your preservation pipeline. GLN nodes harvest content directly from your Web site. If you publish it, the GLN will preserve it without the need for separate packaging and delivery workflows for preservation.
• Up to 80 preserved copies, none in the cloud. GLN participation makes preservation of the scholarly record the shared effort between publishers and libraries it is supposed to be. Your content stays only where you want it: with your paying subscribers.
• Verifiable by libraries. Participating in the GLN means scholars and subscribers can verify your commitment to preservation via the ISSN Portal. The GLN discloses preservation practices and provides regular holdings reports to the Keepers registry, so your contributions really count.
• Go for the gold. If you are not in the 1% of Crossref members preserving their content at the Gold level -- or worse, if you are among the 33% of Crossref members whose content is not currently preserved in any archive -- participating in the GLN will help you progress to Bronze, Silver, or Gold². Bonus: CLOCKSS and the GLN use the same LOCKSS technology and work closely together, so you could be on your way to Gold even faster by participating in both archives for the same amount of effort.

Contact us

Many publishing platforms are LOCKSS-ready for turnkey participation in the GLN, including:

• Atypon Systems' Literatum platform
• BePress' Digital Commons platform
• HighWire Press' JCore and Scolaris platforms
• Ingenta's Connect and Edify platforms
• Janeway platform
• KGL PubFactory's PubFactory platform
• Open Journals System (OJS)
• Silverchair platform
• Ubiquity platform
• University of Michigan's Fulcrum platform

Contact us

• Under what circumstances do users access content preserved in the GLN? A member library's GLN node substitutes its preserved copy of a given URL only if the user request to your Web site fails, if your site is gone forever (post-disappearance access), is temporarily unavailable (failover access), or indicates that the requesting IP address no longer has a subscription (post-cancellation access). This access functionality is only available to qualified local users of the member library (for instance, students on campus at a university or patrons on site at a public library). There is no external access or republishing mechanism.
• Who ensures that only subscribers can harvest content publishers make available for preservation in the GLN? You do, via your Web site's own access controls: each member library's GLN node crawls content from your Web site from an IP address in its institution's subscription range.
• Is it possible to allow only some GLN member libraries to preserve content in the GLN? Yes, although this is uncommon. Making your Web site LOCKSS-compatible involves a simple machine-readable permission statement, which you are able to implement conditionally if needed.
• What is the difference between LOCKSS and CLOCKSS? CLOCKSS is a digital archive, and LOCKSS is the digital preservation software system used to secure and preserve its holdings.
• What is the difference between the GLN and CLOCKSS? The GLN and CLOCKSS are complementary initiatives, both using the LOCKSS digital preservation software system to preserve the scholarly record. The GLN delivers post-disappearance access, failover access, and post-cancellation access at a local scale, while CLOCKSS ensures the long-term survival of the scholarly record at a global scale. Joint participation in the GLN and CLOCKSS supports a comprehensive digital preservation strategy for publishers.

Contact us

1. As of 2024-06-03, the ISSN network tracks 381,817 online resources. Of these, 93,042 are preserved in at least one Keepers archive like the GLN, meaning 288,775 (75.6%) are not preserved in any; 70,753 (18.5%) are preserved in just one or two, while only 22,287 (5.84%) are preserved in three or more. Explore Keepers Statistics
2. According to a 2024 study of 7,438,037 DOIs, only 4,342,368 (58.4%) were preserved in at least one recognized archive like the GLN, while 2,056,492 (27.6%) were not preserved in any. The study found that among Crossref members, 6,982 (32.9%) do not preserve their content in any recognized archive like the GLN, while 12,257 (57.7%) only preserve their content at the Bronze level (over 25% of their content in at least one archive), 1,797 (8.5%) at the Silver level (over 50% of their content in at least two archives), and 204 (0.96%) at the Gold level (over 75% of their content in at least three archives). Read "Digital Scholarly Journals Are Poorly Preserved: A Study of 7 Million Articles" by Martin Paul Eve (2024), Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 12(1), DOI: 10.31274/jlsc.16288
3. In 2018, the Center for Research Libraries' Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC) audit awarded CLOCKSS 5 out of 5 on Technologies, Technical Infrastructure, and Security. Read the 2018 CLOCKSS Audit Report