Preserving Openness: A Comparative Review of Archiving Solutions for Open Access Books | Copim Archiving & Preservation Group

Copim’s Archiving and Preservation Group is happy to announce the publication of a new report, Applying Open Access and Open Data to the Archiving of Long-Form Scholarship, with which we present a comparative analysis of five widely used preservation services – namely CLOCKSS, Portico, the Internet Archive, Zenodo, and Figshare – through the lens of Copim’s Open Archiving Criteria.

The full report is available via Zenodo:

Steiner, T., Cole, G., Fry, J., Gatti, R., Higman, R., Stokes, P., & Turpin, H. (2026). Applying Open Access and Open Data to the Archiving of Long-Form Scholarship: A Comparative Analysis of Existing Services Through the Lens of the Copim Open Archiving Criteria. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19882343

These criteria define what it means to archive open access scholarship in a way that preserves not only files, but also the open nature of the publication: ensuring that content and metadata remain accessible, that processes are transparent and verifiable, and that infrastructures align with established good practice in digital preservation.

What emerges from the analysis is a clear structural dichotomy that exists across the current landscape. On the one hand, “dark archives” such as CLOCKSS and Portico provide highly robust, standards-aligned preservation, but operate on restricted access models, releasing content only under specific trigger conditions. On the other hand, openly accessible repositories such as the Internet Archive, Zenodo, and Figshare prioritise immediate availability, discoverability, and reuse, making them central to the ecosystem of open scholarship.

Rather than positioning these approaches in direct opposition to each other, the report highlights their complementarity. As the report notes, each service addresses a different dimension of the preservation challenge – and crucially, neither one of those services fully meets the requirements of open archiving on its own. Dark archives offer security without openness; open repositories offer access without always providing the same level of formal preservation assurance.

The key insight, therefore, is a rather practical one: a combined approach can bridge this gap. By strategically combining preservation-focused services with open, community-governed repositories, publishers can implement workflows that meet Copim’s Open Archiving criteria in a meaningful and achievable way. This is not a theoretical proposition, but a viable pathway using existing infrastructures.

This finding is particularly relevant for small and medium-sized, scholar-led as well as institutional publishers – those who make up the “long tail” of open access book publishing, and who often lack the resources to engage with complex or costly preservation systems. The report demonstrates that accessible, standards-aligned archiving is within reach, especially when leveraging open repositories such as Zenodo or the Internet Archive alongside other preservation services.

More broadly, the analysis reframes archiving as a question of coordination rather than selection. It points toward a connected ecosystem approach, where different infrastructures play distinct but interlocking roles in supporting the long-term availability, integrity, and openness of scholarly work.